Making a spear

[DanHoward]

You don't need Carpentry. You don't need any skill roll. How hard is it to whittle a point on a stick? If you mess up one attempt you simply try again with a slightly shorter length of wood. If the wood isn't suitable then you get another. I'd only require a skill roll if you are in a hurry and you need the first attempt to succeed.

[Anthony]

That mostly indicates you're looking at a generous default on Armoury (I've tried to whittle a sharp point on a stick, and it certainly is something you can screw up). I would probably errata the extra skills in Lands out of Time into nonexistence.

[Anaraxes]

If you have Carpentry, you can skip the improvised spear and go straight for the ultimate weapon - a board with a nail in it.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Anders

I'd say that to make the stone head you need Armoury, but otherwise Carpentry is find. And if you don't scare them with a pointy stick you can always use a banana.

Getting even a nice piece of obsidian to look more like a weapon and less like a random broken rock is much harder than it looks.
My TL0 Armory default ended in about a cup of lost blood, a few chips bouncing off my glasses, and what looked like a random broken rock.

[evileeyore]

To everyone saying "Just whittle a sharp end on a stick, it ain't hard".

Yes, yes it is. You are talking about Armoury/TL 0 (defaults to IQ-5).

I have watched someone spend days trying to make a 'fishing' spear and repeatedly fail, making the same mistakes over, and over, and over agian.

In GURPS terms those are repeated skill roll failures.



Now personally I'd allow a Survival at a penalty (say -3) for making fishing spears or small game spears. Anything sturdier however? No. That's Armoury.


And my first month of stone knapping resulted in blood loss and broken rocks. After that I got better at not bleeding. I never did get the hang of properly knapping an arrow head, but I did make some skinning knives.

[DanHoward]

Stone knapping is difficult. Nobody is claiming that you don't need a skill roll to make a stone spear head.

[ErhnamDJ]

Each skill has tasks that vary in difficulty from -10 up to +10.

The way defaults work is an abstraction. If we were to go into more detail, people would likely start at no knowledge of a skill (a modern Amazonian hunter-gatherer's knowledge of how to format a document in Microsoft Word), which would not allow a roll, then as they gained more knowledge they would cross into each skill level. They would go from no knowledge of the skill up to skill 3, then to 4, then to 5, and so on.

It seems as though making a simple spear is an exceptionally easy task that even an untrained person can usually succeed at. If we say a person with a skill of 4 or higher can often, but not always, succeed at the task, then why not call it a +5 or +6 bonus? Perhaps it's a +4 and they should take extra time for +1 or +2?

I don't see any reason to make this automatic. GURPS is a universal game and there will be characters who will have trouble with it. An uplifted dolphin raised in captivity at TL11 might not have any personal experience with trees or wooden objects. If all it has ever interacted with were synthetic materials, then this will be an extremely difficult task, even if it has a general idea of what sort of tools prehistoric humans used.

I would like to see some better guidelines for task difficulty modifiers and familiarity penalties. I think most GMs would benefit from guidance here.



If this were in my game, I would call it an Armoury/TL0 roll with a +4 TDM, apply an arbitrary familiarity penalty, and not ask for a roll unless there was a serious consequence from failure.

Player: "How long would it take to make a simple spear before the wolves come out again tonight?"

GM: "It will take an hour. The sun is just now starting to set after your long journey back to camp from the river. You have enough time for one attempt. Roll your Armoury/TL0 default at +4. You can't take extra time without risking the wolves arriving before you're done."

Player: "I don't want to do that. I'll make my roll without taking extra time."

In the case of the uplifted dolphin who only knows about plastics, I would assign an additional -4 familiarity penalty, significantly dropping the character's chance of success.



Would anyone have an issue with it being handled like that? I can't see how that could be viewed as unfair.

[Verjigorm]

Originally Posted by evileeyore

To everyone saying "Just whittle a sharp end on a stick, it ain't hard".

Yes, yes it is. You are talking about Armoury/TL 0 (defaults to IQ-5).

I have watched someone spend days trying to make a 'fishing' spear and repeatedly fail, making the same mistakes over, and over, and over agian.

In GURPS terms those are repeated skill roll failures.



Now personally I'd allow a Survival at a penalty (say -3) for making fishing spears or small game spears. Anything sturdier however? No. That's Armoury.


And my first month of stone knapping resulted in blood loss and broken rocks. After that I got better at not bleeding. I never did get the hang of properly knapping an arrow head, but I did make some skinning knives.

I am with Dan Howard on this. It's simple to make a spear our of wood.

But here's a few things: If you're making a spear or any thing out of wood, anything you make from a stick just lying onthe ground is going to be a piece of trash. The wood you use for making handles for wooden weapons is not green wood, but is instead seasoned wood that has been selected carefully. Heck, if there's any fitting to be done, the last thing you want to do is use green, sappy wood that is going to dry out, split and crack while you are using it.

I can make you a spear out of paper towels and some copper wire. Given some actual real materials to work with and tools, and I can craft somethign real nice. It's probably one of the simplest weapons to make.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Verjigorm

If you're making a spear or any thing out of wood, anything you make from a stick just lying onthe ground is going to be a piece of trash. The wood you use for making handles for wooden weapons is not green wood, but is instead seasoned wood that has been selected carefully.

That sort of thing is part of armoury. It just happens to be a fairly easy task.

[Xplo]

Originally Posted by otghand

it would seem that either of these DX based skills would suffice to create a spear head, which suggests that Armoury alone might not.

It suggests no such thing. Armoury/TL0 is the skill of making primitive weapons and is all you need for a spear, including one with an attached head made of stone, obsidian, or bone.

GURPS skills tend to have functional overlap and this is especially true at the lowest TLs; a TL0 armorer is probably also a competent stone knapper and/or bone carver, depending on what crafts are available in his culture, and should not have to pay for more than one skill to be able to make both a stabby stone knife tied to the end of a stick and a scrapey one suitable for working hides. Specialization is for insects and higher TLs.