#3min GURPS is a point buy system. I will create characters for players if they can't make characters. The only dice used are d6, so we abbreviate that by just using "d." GURPS is simple system at heart. Roll equal to or lower than a target number on 3d6. Normally, the target number is a skill or attribute. Everything else is just details. There are often modifiers. ### Criticals Some rolls indicate that either you've succeeded very well or failed worse than a normal failure. #### Critical Success Remembering that this is a roll-low system. critical successes are very low numbers. 3 is always a critical success (CS) and 4 is always a normal success (unless the skill is above 4 in which case, 3-4 are critical successes). If your skill is 15, then 3-5 are a CS. If your skill is 16+ then a roll of 3-6 is a CS. #### Margin of Success Margin of Success (MoS) is a measure of how well you roll. This is equal to the target number minus the roll. If you need 12 and rolled 8, then your MoS is 4. #### Critical Failure If you roll too high, then you fail. If you roll over your target number, it is a failure. Also, if your skill is 16-, then a 16 is a failure and a 17-18 is a critical failure. If your skill is 17+, then 17 is a failure and 18 is a critical failure. #### Margin of Failure Margin of Failure is the amount you lost the roll by. ### Skills Skills are always based on an attribute, typically IQ Or DX. Psionic skills are often based off of QN or Will. ## Combat Rolls Combat, of course, is one of these details. Under most circumstances, you get two rolls in each turn (about one second) of combat. One is an attack and the other is defense. The attack is almost always based on the weapon your PC is using. The defense can be based on the weapon (parry), shield (block), or innate quickness (dodge). Defense isn't equal to the skill, but rather to 1/2 skill + 3. All of these values will be precalculated and on your character sheet. ### A Quick Contest Sometimes you need to roll your skill vs another's skill. Examples include trying a psionic ability (your skill roll vs his Will or QN), escaping from being tied up (your Escape vs his Knot Tying skill), a legal trial could be determined by a Law skill (defendant's Law vs prosecutor's Law skills), or is your attack with a sweeping attack (your attack skill or ST vs the defender's DX or ST). Margin of Victory (MoV) is the winner's MoS minus the loser's MoS. #### Critical Successes and Failures If the winner's MoV is 5 or more, then the winner rolled a critical success. If the loser's MoF is 5+, then the loser rolled a critical failure, #### The Rule of 16 This is a rule use for supernatural quick contest uses, including psionics. The attacker's target is reduced to the higher of 16 or their normal roll. This rule makes it easier to resist powerful attackers. Since, most of the time, the PC's will be more powerful, it might be better to not use this rule. There will, however, still be a few NPC's that are more powerful. The players will vote on this rule. ## Damage and Injury Damage is rolled. For hand-to-hand or most melee weapons, the damage is based on ST. For firearms it is based on the type of weapon. Injury is the damage minus any Damage Resistance, usually from armor or special powers. For some types of weapons, there can be multipliers to the injury. ### Armor and Damage Resistance Armor in GURPS 4e has two important properties: DR (Damage Resistance) and IT (Injury Tolerance). #### Damage Resistance This takes points of damage away from the injury. If the damage #### Injury Tolerance This is a value that the damage is divided by. This is rarely used for normal armor. The values for this are 2, 3, 5, 10, 100, and infinity. The smallest damage will be one, because GURPS almost always rounds against the character. There are other versions of this advantage, but I won't go into that now. ### Weapon Damage Most weapons will have a number of dice of damage (4d, 5d x 2, 3d + 1). Sometimes this will have an armor divisor (AD), written as 2d (5), with the damage equal to 2d with the armor divided by 5; this weapon penetrates armor very well. Weapons will aways have one or more damage types. This is: * Cutting (cut): Man-powered blades used with swinging. * Impale (imp): Man-powered blades used with thrusting. * Crushing (cr): Typically, man-powered weapons such as maces. * Piercing (Pi-, Pi, Pi+, and Pi++): small bullet-like objects. * Burn (burn, inc): Anything hot enough to potentially set things on fire. * Surge (surge): An electric effect which can stun electrical things and shock normal creatures. * Explosion (ex): An area effect form of damage. * Corrosion (cor): An attack which can destroy armor. * Fatigue (fat): Usually stunning damage (goes off of FP rather than HP). * Quintessence (qn): Goes off of QP, making them psychically weaker. * Toxic (toxic): Diseases and poisons. Weapons may optionally have further attributes. * Guided: user guided. * Homing: Goes towards the target on its own. ### Links #### Forward * [[Combat Maneuvers]] #### Back * [[Three Minute Tutorials]]