GURPS Racial Templates

[Jhanis]

Originally Posted by Anders

But yes, races with lower point cost (like humans in DF) have more flexibility than other races. However, often a non-human has traits that a human cannot get. For instance, in my world dwarves get Dark Vision for 25 points. That's something a human cannot normally have. So there are swings and roundabouts.

So the GM has to make rules for each of the characters dynamically?

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

If you think this is a problem (it's not), then just say something like "You each get 150 character points to start with, not including your racial template, which you can choose from the following list." Of course, this will mean that players will all choose the best race available, because it's "free."

But that would mean actually plotting out and creating 0 point templates. I was hoping there was a Gurps module full of legal 0 point templates for each race which you can then use as a base to build your character.

Originally Posted by Christopher R. Rice

Then add a taboo trait to the race so they can't. It's that simple. I'll reiterate - in GURPS you pay for what you get. There is no free lunch. That's just how it works.

So would you suggest me and my group sit down and hammer out the basic templates for all the races? I mean I'm up for it, but I thought there would be a book of these templates like you have in D&D. I like how Gurps doesn't restrict you to a certain path like D&D does, but some of it seems quite open ended and vague. The magic system still bewilders me, most of the time I'm just guessing at how it's supposed to work with the prerequisites and branches.

Originally Posted by Anders

So if you look at something like DF3, where races are implemented, a race cannot vary more than +/- 10 points from the racial advantages. So an ogre with ST +3 in their racial template can buy up to ST 23 while a halfling with ST -3 in their racial template can not get higher than 17. You can always include more stringent limits if you want. "No Halfling can have more than 12 ST" is a valid feature, worth 0 points. As for mauls and bows - there are rules for making all dwarves get a bonus to hit with axes. Racial skill bonuses and racial templates are a thing.

Racial templates shouldn't cost so much that you can't afford to buy skills. That's a matter of racial template design, which is covered in Template Toolkit 2 (I think). I wouldn't have races worth more than 1/3 of the points granted by people. So in a 150 point campaign you shouldn't have races that cost more than +/- 50 points.

But if you want to play it your way, feel free! Again, no one will punish you.

DF3? Is that like a book of racial templates?

Template Toolkit 2, I'll have to look that one up.

What I want to avoid is making an overpowered character that steals the show from my group. I was hoping to find a list of tried and tested, balanced, templates to start from. Rather than min/maxing a character and destroying the game balance, making it less fun for everyone else.

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Yeah...here's the thing. I've never seen anyone create a human and only buy skills. By default if you are making a mage, then you boost IQ and get magic aptitude. If you are making a warrior then you boost ST, DX and get combat reflexes. If you are making a femme fatale spy then you boost IQ and DX and invest heavily in attractiveness. So no, humans aren't going to be better at skills. As for the Size Modifier issue, it's simple. Being big is a net disadvantage. Being able to reach higher and further doesn't make up for being an easier target But being small is something where the advantages are very big.

Well, obviously. But it was just an example. At 0 points an Elf should be faster than a Dwarf. A Giant should be stronger than a Fairy. But at 0 points right now, they're all the same, a basic human.

Originally Posted by Inky

No need to panic. Those race templates in the Basic Set are not "the official mandatory race templates for GURPS". They're very much there as examples (that's probably why they only bothered to include a measly four templates, dragon, dwarf, cat-person and vampire - there isn't even an elf, I don't know where you got your elf from). You're expected to make your own. Home-brew character templates are the default for GURPS, unless you're using one of the pre-made worlds like GURPS Dungeon Fantasy - and even then there's nothing to stop you house-ruling things and many GMs do.

For some reason they went for making all of those templates more powerful than a baseline human, but you could equally go for the Dungeons and Dragons approach and make them all 0-point templates with advantages and disadvantages that pretty much balance each other.

People are always making up their own GURPS elf, dwarf and other Tolkien/D&D standard race templates, including some 0-point total ones, and posting them on the forum or on the GURPS Discord server. The difficulty is to find them. But I see you've already made a decent start at making some yourself. Maybe other people will pitch in and point you to theirs, if you want them? And I made up a very low point value vampire template (negative point value), if anyone wants to see it!

The Elf was just off the top of my head as a standard fantasy creature with expected skills.

I'd love to see your negative point vampire template, as I may start borrowing some template ideas and presenting them to my group as "Here's some basic races to choose from and build on." lol

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

Funnily enough, an aarakocra is an example of a race that would get stuff on their template that a human couldn’t get. They have winged flight.

But on the other hand, suppose you do have a race that simply has stuff that a human could have. Let’s say your half-elves have DX 11 and Magery 1; template cost 35 points. So a half-elf character starts out with 35 fewer points than a human to spend on skills. But the human starts with less DX and no Magery. If he wants to be as good as that baseline half-elf, he can, but he has to spend… 35 points. There is no injustice there, except that half-elf characters are gently pushed toward being high-DX mages.

It’s also worth noting that GURPS points costs mostly, broadly, primarily reflect the benefit of the feature to an adventurous player-character. Suppose that elves have a bundle of stuff that costs 100 points. This doesn’t mean that elves are “better” than humans; it means that a baseline elf has a head start toward being a badass adventurer, and so has to pay for it. Perhaps humans have ten times the fertility rate of elves, and elves can’t have Versatile (a taboo trait for them). Neither costs the humans points, but the fast-breeding, innovative humans are going to walk all over the elves in a few generations. Elven adventurers are just going to be smug badasses one on one, though.

That's what should be unique about the human template though: You can choose to pursue any path. Whereas the other racial templates should have a suggested path and just be, at 0 points, better than humans at some things.

[Proteus]

Originally Posted by Jhanis

Skills
Tail Attack (DX+1) [2]

How can you buy "Tail Attack" when you haven't bought a tail to use it with?

[Anders]

Originally Posted by Jhanis

So the GM has to make rules for each of the characters dynamically?

The rules for Dark Vision are all there in the Basic Set, including "can't typically be used by normal humans.

Originally Posted by Jhanis

So would you suggest me and my group sit down and hammer out the basic templates for all the races? I mean I'm up for it, but I thought there would be a book of these templates like you have in D&D. I like how Gurps doesn't restrict you to a certain path like D&D does, but some of it seems quite open ended and vague. The magic system still bewilders me, most of the time I'm just guessing at how it's supposed to work with the prerequisites and branches.

That's DF3 (Dungeon Fantasy 3: The Next Level). Has heaps of racial templates in it. It is part of the Dungeon Fantasy line, which is a toolkit to make a D&D-style campaign.

GURPS Fantasy also has some racial templates, as does Banestorm. But they're not usually 0-points. This is how GURPS handles some races being better choices in a dungeon-style setting than others. The better choices start with some of their points pre-spent.

[tshiggins]

Originally Posted by Anders

I don't think anyone has been able to make this work without allowing horrible exploits. But if you can, more power to you! No one will punish you for using your own home rules.

Right. It's your campaign, do as you like.

But the default, in GURPS, is that advantages and options cost what they cost, and the "justification" for them doesn't matter.

Any of your players can, very easily, create a regular human character who has scores of "11" in all four stats -- and it will cost that character 60 points, which is exactly the same cost paid by the half-elf. The human then cannot use those points to buy skills, either, just as the half-elf cannot.

Same-same.

The racial "fluff" is just the justification for having a character with "11" in all base stats. The player could always decrease the stat and get the points back, and say this particular half-elf takes more after the human parent than the elvish.

"Sure thing. Whatever."

Or, if you want half-elves to be nothing more than humans with pointy ears and greater height, both of which are zero-point features, then define them that way, in your campaign. Nobody will stop you.

I mean, half-elves are usually based on Aragorn or other Numenoreans, from Tolkein. If you wanted, instead, to define them as twisted mutants whose mixed blood has made them inferior in every way to both parents, and thus left as changelings, then do that.

Here's the thing. The more flexible a system is, at its baseline, the more work a GM must do, up front, to define how things work in a particular campaign.
And then, the GM must sit down with the players, in "Session Zero," and make sure the campaign he or she wants to run is one in which the players wish to play, and the characters they create work in the GM's setting.

I've had that blow up in my face, more than once; as have most of us who participate in this forum. :p
That's why Bill Stoddard (and others) provide prospective players with a campaign prospectus, to see if they have any interest in playing what the GMs have interest in running.
http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread...ard+prospectus

In point-buy systems, TANSTAAFL either applies, universally (which is the GURPS default), or you open up character creation to exploits, in your game.

Full stop.

[Anders]

They had an advantage in 3rd edition that changed the cost of skills and it was horribly unbalanced.

[Anthony]

I would note that the other option is to just not have racial templates at all; if you want to play an elf, buy whatever combination of traits you think would make your character feel like an elf.

[Jhanis]

Originally Posted by Proteus

How can you buy "Tail Attack" when you haven't bought a tail to use it with?

Damn it, see this is what I'm talking about! Making a Dragonborn buy his tail. Don't make humans buy their butt cheeks! Ugh......Striker, 5 points....I'll have to drop my Acrobatics, Escape and Climb down a level to pay for it. 13 on 3d6 is still decent odds.

[Anders]

By the way, I think this discussion is worth having but I understand if SJG does not want the first thread on their homepage be titled GURPS Racism. So I'll ask the mods to change the name to something more neutral.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

Have you thought about making a racial template for humans? I mean, rather than having to make the other templates cost 0 points, why not make humans cost as much as the other templates? Give them as many points in non-skills as everyone else.

Though I'm compelled to ask this: Why do you want to use GURPS as opposed to a system where this problem will never arise?

[Jhanis]

Originally Posted by Anders

The rules for Dark Vision are all there in the Basic Set, including "can't typically be used by normal humans.

Where? All I see in the book is:

Dark Vision
25 Points

You can see in absolute darkness using some means other than light, radar or sonar. You suffer no skill penalties for darkness, no matter what its origins. However, you cannot see colours in the dark.

Special Enhancements
Colour Vision: You can see colours in the dark

Originally Posted by Anders

That's DF3 (Dungeon Fantasy 3: The Next Level). Has heaps of racial templates in it. It is part of the Dungeon Fantasy line, which is a toolkit to make a D&D-style campaign.

GURPS Fantasy also has some racial templates, as does Banestorm. But they're not usually 0-points. This is how GURPS handles some races being better choices in a dungeon-style setting than others. The better choices start with some of their points pre-spent.

Interesting, I'll have to hunt down a copy.

Originally Posted by tshiggins

Right. It's your campaign, do as you like.

But the default, in GURPS, is that advantages and options cost what they cost, and the "justification" for them doesn't matter.

Any of your players can, very easily, create a regular human character who has scores of "11" in all four stats -- and it will cost that character 60 points, which is exactly the same cost paid by the half-elf. The human then cannot use those points to buy skills, either, just as the half-elf cannot.

Same-same.

The racial "fluff" is just the justification for having a character with "11" in all base stats. The player could always decrease the stat and get the points back, and say this particular half-elf takes more after the human parent than the elvish.

"Sure thing. Whatever."

Or, if you want half-elves to be nothing more than humans with pointy ears and greater height, both of which are zero-point features, then define them that way, in your campaign. Nobody will stop you.

I mean, half-elves are usually based on Aragorn or other Numenoreans, from Tolkein. If you wanted, instead, to define them as twisted mutants whose mixed blood has made them inferior in every way to both parents, and thus left as changelings, then do that.

Here's the thing. The more flexible a system is, at its baseline, the more work a GM must do, up front, to define how things work in a particular campaign.
And then, the GM must sit down with the players, in "Session Zero," and make sure the campaign he or she wants to run is one in which the players wish to play, and the characters they create work in the GM's setting.

I've had that blow up in my face, more than once; as have most of us who participate in this forum. :p
That's why Bill Stoddard (and others) provide prospective players with a campaign prospectus, to see if they have any interest in playing what they have interest in running.
http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread...ard+prospectus

In point-buy systems, TANSTAAFL either applies, universally (which is the GURPS default), or you open up character creation to exploits, in your game.

Full stop.

Valid points, what's to stop a player from making an elf then stealing all their DX points and using them to essentially make a human with double strength. I guess I would have to rejig the whole cost of points for the different stats, give them unsellable advantages that are essential to the race, or just have the GM say "yeah, no. You chose a giant, you can't have 2 strength and 23 DX, wielding a redwood as a Very-long-longbow." lol

Originally Posted by Anthony

I would note that the other option is to just not have racial templates at all; if you want to play an elf, buy whatever combination of traits you think would make your character feel like an elf.

But like I say, you have to buy the advantages and disadvantages just making the race, before you can even think about what class you want to focus on and then you have less points to spend on that, compared to a human who is just the standard out the gate.

Originally Posted by Anders

By the way, I think this discussion is worth having but I understand if SJG does not want the first thread on their homepage be titled GURPS Racism. So I'll ask the mods to change the name to something more neutral.

But it IS racism! Dirty Human Supremacy Propaganda! lol I get your point though.....Gurps Speciesism?

Originally Posted by SilvercatMoonpaw

Have you thought about making a racial template for humans? I mean, rather than having to make the other templates cost 0 points, why not make humans cost as much as the other templates? Give them as many points in non-skills as everyone else.

Though I'm compelled to ask this: Why do you want to use GURPS as opposed to a system where this problem will never arise?

Hmm that might be an idea. But then I'd probably have to make new advantages and disadvantages for what makes a human, human.

A few reasons, first it's the game my GM had the stuff for. Second, the combat and skill rolls are easier and faster than DnD. Instead of all the specialised die, it's all d6 and there's less maths to do, so we can focus on the story and characters more than the mechanics. We never use a grid for example and draw out exactly the distance from the player to the enemy, then check the handbook to see the range of the fireball, etc. It's usually "That dude over there, I throw a fireball at him. *rolls die* that's a hit. *rolls damage* next player."