[Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Vulnerability and Weakness

[johndallman]

Vulnerability [-10 to -80] is an exotic physical disadvantage. You take additional damage from a particular kind of attack, expressed as a multiplier to damage that penetrates DR. This disadvantage appeared during the 3e period, but was changed for 4e.

Weakness [-2 to -60] is likewise an exotic physical disadvantage. You take damage merely from being in the presence of some substance or condition that isn’t normally harmful. This is direct HP damage, not affected by DR. This disadvantage appeared in GURPS Supers for 3e.

Vulnerability is used for classic cases like werewolves and silver, but is quite generalised. It needs to be distinguished from Susceptible, which is about HT rolls, not damage, and can provide a way to bypass Supernatural Durability. Rather painfully, the multiplied damage for this disadvantage is then subject to wounding multipliers: werewolves hit in the vitals with silver take x12 (x3 vitals, x4 silver) damage after DR, and tend to abruptly stop arguing. The disadvantage value depends on the damage multiplier, and the rarity of the attack form, using a Vulnerability-specific table. You aren’t allowed more than two types of Vulnerability without GM permission, and you cannot be Vulnerable to something you have a specific defence against. There is a special -50% limitation that makes you Vulnerable to fatigue point loss, rather than injuries, which might work well with Unfit.

Weakness is for things like vampires in sunlight. The disadvantage value depends on the rate at which you take damage, from 1d/minute to 1d/30 minutes, modified by the rarity of the substance. Like Vulnerability, you can’t have more than two Weaknesses without GM approval, and there’s a ‑50% limitation for taking FP instead of HP. There’s another special limitation for sensitivity to intensity: there are barriers that can halve the damage, but especially intense sources double it.

Both of these disadvantages show up on morphology meta-traits, as well as racial templates. For example, elemental “Body of” traits often have them with respect to their opposite element. Supernatural creatures, such as Discworld elves, faerie, trolls, vampires, werewolves, etc., suffer from these disadvantages in many settings. Mundane creatures can still have them, for things like water of the wrong salinity, or acquire them after spending a long time in a strange environment, such as zero-G. DF monsters quite often have one of these disadvantages, although I’m not going to list them, and High-Tech, Pulp Guns and Loadouts: Monster Hunters have ammunition for exploiting them. Horror and Worlds of Horror have more monsters and variants, and Space has Vulnerabilities and Weaknesses for aliens. Thaumatology discusses the trade-offs between Magic Susceptibility and Vulnerability, since really specialised wizards may have embraced magic too thoroughly to resist it normally. Zombies often have these disadvantages, frequently severely, and Zombies has new enhancements and limitations for Weakness.

Some interesting variants for these disadvantages were posted back in 2015, and it seemed worth linking to them. I’ve never used these disadvantages as a GM, since I’ve never run traditional horror or dungeon-crawling under GURPS, and they feel a bit four-colour-superhero for my taste in PCs. The sole werewolf we fought in the occult WWII game was dangerous enough to make a silver knife and silver bullets fixtures on my equipment list: all wolves are werewolves in that setting, but few want anything to do with human concerns.

Have these disadvantages enlivened your games?