GURPS Fading Suns Conversion

[Jürgen Hubert]

I've begun to get interested in a GURPS Fading Suns conversion again, and I will post various thoughts on it in this thread - since there are a lot of issues to cover.

Let's start with energy shields. I'm trying to come up with a good way to model the energy shields of Fading Suns in GURPS, but this is fairly tricky.

This requires some explanation of the Fading Suns damage and armor system:

Every character has a number of "Vitality" points before he dies - 10 for a "typical" human.

Each weapon has a damage value. A Dagger might have a base damage of 5, a Rapier of 6, a laser rifle of 7, a sniper rifle of 8, and so forth. Depending on how well a character hits, he might also add bonus points to that damage value - anywhere from 0 to 9, although only very skilled people will be able to get one of the higher values.

The actual damage is then determined by rolling a number of d6 equal to the damage value, counting each 1,2,3, or 4 as a point of damage.

Then the damage is reduced by armor. Armor has ratings ranging from 2 for heavy clothing, 4 for synthsilk, to 10 for plate mail or 14 for powered armor. As with damage, you roll a number of d6 equal to the protection value, and each 1-4 reduces the actual damage by one.

Energy shields function a bit differently. Normal energy shields don't function well with armor - synthsilk that's worn under normal clothing works, but actual bulky armor requires special assault shields. All energy shields will trigger when the damage roll ends up with 5 or more points of damage, but before armor is subtracted. They then reduce the damage of the attack - by 10 for standard shields, though advanced shields intended for use with battle armor might substract as much as 20. If the attack does more damage than the shield can absorb, it burns out temporarily for a number of rounds equal to the excess damage. It also protects against broad impact damage like falls, but in this case the shield has a 1/3rd chance of temporarily burning out after use.

Each shield can absorb a number of hits before its power cell needs to be recharged or replaced - ranging from 10 for standard shields to 30 for battle shields.

Certain types of damage can also "leak through" an energy shield - plasma weapons leak one point of damage through the shield for each 1 or 2 rolled on the damage roll, while flame weapons leak on damage rolls of 1.


So, how to represent all this in GURPS terms? While velocity-limited Force Screens are a good start, I feel that energy weapons should provide some protection in melee, especially against particularly powerful hits. Yet I don't want to render someone completely invulnerable in melee who is wearing an ultra-tech body stocking.