GURPS Lux

My thanks to Ulzgoroth, whose feedback on a draft of this document improved it substantially.

Any misstatements that remain are all my fault. Please contact me; I'll correct any errors.

I also thank all the GURPS writers and editors and bloggers and the participants on the GURPS forums and GURPS subreddit.

GURPS is a trademark of Steve Jackson Games, and its rules and art are copyrighted by Steve Jackson Games. All rights are reserved by Steve Jackson Games. This game aid is the original creation of Zed Lopez and is released for free distribution, and not for resale, under the permissions granted in the Steve Jackson Games Online Policy.

There are several values based on attribute scores called secondary characteristics. The first we'll talk about are Hit Points (HP) and Damage (dmg). Both are derived from your Strength.

Armor (or any protective layer) has a specific damage resistance (DR).

The DR is simply subtracted from the attack's Basic Damage to yield the penetrating damage (PD). If that reduces it to zero (or less), the attack's damage is zero and there's no injury. (Penetrating Damage is simply the same as Basic Damage if no armor is involved.) The HP of Penetrating Damage is the HP of the injury, the amount the defender deducts from their current HP.

Injuries are assumed to be to the torso, so a vest is as good as head-to-toe protection (unless you incorporate rules for hit locations, but we haven't gotten to those).

Armor can potentially reduce any injury to zero; there isn't a distinction between crushing damage and other kinds.

During normal play, the amount of time things take and the order in which characters act is typically ad hoc. During combat, it's well defined. So there's a shift when combat begins. Depending on circumstances, play may go in and out of formal combat – it's the GM's call.

Basic Speed (BS) is another secondary characteristic, representing your response time. It defaults to your (Health + Dexterity)/4, keeping the fraction. There are a few places in GURPS where you divide or multiply. In nearly all of them, you round the result down to the next lower whole number. This is a rare case of maintaining a fraction in the result.

When combat begins, the GM defines a turn sequence of the combatants in a specific order. This order doesn't change for the duration of the combat, no matter how the combatants' circumstances may change. Formally, this goes in order by Basic Speed, with PCs beating NPCs in ties, with Dexterity as a further tie-breaker, and if necessary a die roll as ultimate tie-breaker.

Or you could start with the PC with the highest Basic Speed and then go around the table, with the NPCs going last. Or even simpler, just start with a player next to the GM and go around the table, with the NPCs going last.

Getting to strike first is a huge advantage in GURPS combat, sometimes a conclusive one. An opponent NPC getting to act before a PC can be a big deal. But so long as the NPCs are going last, the order in which the PCs act relative to each other isn't as likely to be important. If there's a major adversary in the fight who should get to act before one or more PCs, constructing the whole Turn Sequence in Basic Speed order may be appropriate; otherwise, you could opt to skip some bookkeeping.

Whether you're going in Basic Speed order or just around the table, it's always the case that you establish a specific Turn Sequence at the start and that this sequence doesn't change during the combat.

The Turn Sequence simply loops. If the Turn Sequence is Sam, Jack, Rosa, then after Rosa's turn is another turn for Sam. There's nothing special about going from the bottom of the sequence back to the top. When it's your turn, you say what you're doing and you do it – players don't make declarations of intent in advance of their turns.

The time between the beginning of your turn and the beginning of your next turn is defined as one second.

When combat begins, you should ensure there's an understanding of who's where relative to each other and to other features of note like escape routes or things that could be used as cover. Drawing at least a rough map might help everyone visualize the terrain, but for now we're accepting a loose understanding of relative positions. (GURPS does offer rules for tracking location and facing in detail on a map, but we won't be covering those.)

Most weapon skills govern a category of weapons and some of the categories are broader than you might expect. It's probably no surprise that you use knives with the Knife skill. And for a police nightstick, you'd use the Shortsword skill. Wait, what? Shortsword covers any balanced one-handed weapon from 1-2 feet long, whether it's an actual shortsword or a nightstick. Broadsword is similarly broad, covering balanced one-handed weapons from 2-4 feet long, from a cavalry saber to a walking stick. Due to its balance point closer to the grip, a balanced weapon is generally easier to manipulate than an unbalanced weapon that concentrates its mass on its far end like an axe or a mace. That brings us to the Axe/Mace skill, which handles one-handed weapons with the weight concentrated at one end, from a hatchet to a pick.

We'll now add relevant skill to our weapons table – the information in the table is going to grow as we cover more topics. We'll say "baton" to refer to short balanced clubs (including a police nightstick.)

To defend yourself in combat, you roll against one of your active defenses. You can only attempt an Active Defense against an attack you were aware of. If someone is completely unaware of an attack before it happens, the attack succeeds or fails based only on the attacker's Success Roll.

(If "Active Defense" makes you wonder what a "passive defense" would be, that isn't a term used in GURPS 4th edition. GURPS 3rd edition had both "active defenses" and "passive defenses" and the "active defense" name stuck in GURPS 4th.)

Since the time between the beginning of your turn and the beginning of your next turn is just a second, the actions available to you are brief and discrete. For instance, you could Attack someone in reach if you had a weapon at hand, or you could Ready a weapon if you didn't. Attack and Ready are examples of maneuvers – you'll choose one each turn.

If you don't have a weapon in your hand, you have to get it ready – if it's close at hand in a fashion meant to be drawn quickly, like on your belt in a sheath or holster, it only takes the one turn.

To attack, you make a Success Roll against your relevant combat skill. If you're attacking with a weapon that can do more than one thing (e.g., Thrust or Swing), describe how you're using it before you roll.

If you succeed, your target gets to make a roll for their Active Defense, e.g., a Dodge roll; if that succeeds, you missed.

If you did hit, roll for Basic Damage, then subtract any armor's DR to yield Penetrating Damage. That's the HP of the defender's injury.

We now know enough for a simple example of combat.

Alice is fighting Bob.

Bob has Strength 10, Dexterity 11, Health 11. He's holding a small knife, and so he has Thrust Damage of 1d-2 (1d-2 from his Strength and +0 for the small knife) and Swing Damage of 1d-2 (1d from Strength and -2 for the small knife). His maximum HP is 10, and since he's uninjured, so is his current HP. His Basic Speed is 5.5 – (Dexterity 11 + Health 11)/4, and so his Dodge is 8 (Basic Speed of 5.5, rounded down + 3). His Knife skill is 11.

Alice has Strength 13, Dexterity 10, Health 10, and is holding a baton – with her Strength of 13, her Thrust Damage with it is 1d+1 and her Swing Damage is 2d. Her maximum HP (and current HP) is 13. Her Basic Speed is 5, so her Dodge is 8. Her Shortsword skill is 11.

Bob's Basic Speed is higher, so the GM says Bob goes first. He selects an Attack Maneuver, stabbing with his knife. He rolls a 10, below his Knife skill of 11, a success. But Alice gets to Dodge, and rolls an 8, succeeding at her defense and so Bob ultimately misses.

Alice also selects Attack and swings her baton. She rolls a 10, succeeding, and so now Bob has to roll an Active Defense. He rolls a 9 to Dodge, one more than his Dodge of 8, so he fails and Alice hits. She rolls 2d for damage and they come up 10. Bob's reduced to 0 HP and falls unconscious. (You can see that that second die of Swing Damage that starts at Strength 13 can pack a wallop.)

It's a common house-rule (or GM judgement call in the moment) that mooks – undistinguished, probably anonymous NPC opponents – simply fall unconscious at 0 HP and are taken out of the fight. But as we'll soon see, characters don't (necessarily) fall unconscious at 0 HP.

For most games with as many as three attributes, one of them is charm or charisma, but in GURPS a host of advantages and disadvantages cover that territory.

These advantages and disadvantages are examples of reaction modifiers – things that modify Reaction Rolls. We'll see more later.

Janet is asking a stranger on the street for directions. The player didn't say they wanted to attempt an Influence roll and the GM feels like letting a Reaction Roll determine the response. Janet has an appearance of Attractive for +1. She has Charisma 2 for another +2. And she has a good Voice for another +2. The GM rolls a 3, so despite her +5, the result is just 8: Poor. The stranger mumbles "it's called Google Maps" and keeps moving.

These examples illustrate some basic points about advantages and disadvantages. Some advantages and disadvantages come in levels, like Charisma, and some don't, like Voice. Some advantages and disadvantages are mutually incompatible, like Handsome/Beautiful and Ugly. And some advantages and disadvantages are straightforwardly opposite, like Voice and Disturbing Voice. In other cases there are near opposites, like Attractive and Unattractive. We'll see these patterns more as we cover other advantages and disadvantages.

If an injury reduces your current HP to 0 or less, you have to immediately make an unconsciousness check or you fall unconscious. The unconsciousness check is a Success Roll against Health, subject to a penalty if your current HP is at -maxHP or lower – the roll is at a penalty of -1 for every multiple of your full HP you're down, i.e., -1 for -maxHP, -2 for -2 x maxHP, -3 for -3 x maxHP, -4 for -4 x maxHP.

Thereafter, at the start of each of your turns, you must roll another unconsciousness check as above.

If you fall unconscious, you drop anything you were holding and fall down. It's the GM's call whether you're completely unconscious, or just incapacitated. You're definitely unable to take action, but you may not be insensate.

DFRPG and Discworld specify that an unconsciousness check first occurs when someone is first reduced to 0 HP; GURPS Lite and the Basic Set don't – in those, the first check occurs at the beginning of your next turn. It has been confirmed that this was an inadvertent omission and it was always supposed to be the case that they begin when you're first reduced to 0 HP. This is a substantial difference – with an average Health of 10 and the immediate check, you're twice as likely to fall unconscious before being able to act on your turn (or possibly worse, depending on the details).

This tutorial will assume the immediate unconsciousness check rule is in effect. I suspect most GURPS players use the Basic Set rule as written and don't call for the immediate unconsciousness check. Don't be surprised by other sources asserting the checks begin at the beginning of your next turn – that's perfectly correct by the rules as written.

Naturally, there are also outcomes more dire than unconsciousness. Your current HP dropping to -maxHP marks the threshold at which you're at risk of death. If an injury causes your HP to reach or cross that threshold, roll a death check vs. Health. It's simply against Health, without any penalty. If you succeed, you're still standing and functional. If you fail, you fall dead. As you receive additional damage, roll another death check for any injury causing you to reach or cross the thresholds of -2 x maxHP, -3 x maxHP, and -4 x maxHP.

Note the differences here. The rolls vs. Health to resist unconsciousness:

• first occur when you first reach 0 HP or less
• recur at the start of each of your turns
• have a -1 penalty for each full multiple of maxHP that your current HP is in the negative

The rolls vs. Health to resist death:

• first occur when your current HP first reaches or crosses -maxHP
• recur each time an injury brings your current HP to or beyond the thesholds of -2 x maxHP, -3 x maxHP, and -4 x maxHP
• are always simply against Health with no penalty for how low on HP you are

If a single injury crosses more than one of those thresholds, you have to roll multiple times.

Suppose a character with a maxHP of 11 has a current HP of 1 and suddenly takes an injury of 23 points of damage, bringing them to -22 HP. They would roll death checks vs. Health twice and then, assuming they survive, an unconsciousness check vs. Health at -2 (for being at -2 x maxHP).

During any given combat, you would only make at most four death checks. There isn't a limit to the number of unconsciousness checks you make so long as the combat and your luck hold out. But you'd quickly be pushing your luck. If your Health is 10, there's only a 1 in 8 chance of succeeding 3 unconsciousness checks in a row, even worse if you reach -maxHP or lower and are at a penalty.

"Unconsciousness check" and "death check" aren't official GURPS terminology from the rules, but their meanings should be obvious enough to GURPS players.

Very Unfit: -2 to all Health rolls to resist unconsciousness or death

Unfit: -1 to all Health rolls to resist unconsciousness or death

Fit: +1 to all Health rolls

Very Fit: +2 to all Health rolls

Easy to Kill: for each level of Easy to Kill, you're at -1 to death checks

Hard to Kill: for each level of Hard to Kill, you're at +1 to any Health roll where failure means death. Only up to 2 levels possible. If your Hard to Kill bonus is what makes the difference between success and failure, you collapse, apparently dead. You have the usual chance at recovering from unconsciousness.

Hard to Subdue: each level of Hard to Subdue gives you a +1 to any Health roll to resist unconsciousness. Only up to 2 levels possible.

Being Fit and Very Fit differ from simply having higher Health because they don't contribute to your Basic Speed (and thus neither to your Dodge) and they don't apply to Health-based skill rolls.

There isn't an Easy to Subdue counterpart to Hard to Subdue. (But a GM might invent one.)

You can see that having one level of each of Hard to Kill and Hard to Subdue is close to being the same thing as just having Fit. There are many cases like this where one advantage largely or completely encompasses another.

If your Effective Skill is less than 3, you automatically fail and don't get to roll, unless you're making a defense roll, or rolling vs. Health to stay conscious or alive, or similar cases where you're forced to roll to resist something. Then you do get to roll and have at least a 2% chance of success by rolling a 3 or 4.

A 3 or 4 on a Success Roll is not just an automatic success, but a critical success. That's an unusually good outcome. If your ES was 15 or more, 5 is also a critical success, or if your ES is 16 or more, then 6 is also a critical success. (That trend doesn't continue – 6 is the highest roll that can be a critical success.)

There are also critical failures. You guessed it, unusually bad outcomes. 18 is always a critical failure; 17 is a critical failure if your Effective Skill was anything less than 16. If your ES was 16 or more then 17 is an ordinary failure. You can count on 17 always being a failure, but not always a critical one. Also rolls 10 or more over your Effective Skill are critical failures – with ES 6, a roll of 16 is a critical failure, at ES 5, a roll of 15 is a critical failure, and so on down.

Notice that no matter how good you are, for any Success Roll, both an ordinary failure and a critical failure are possibilities. If 17 weren't an ordinary failure for an ES of 16 or more, then for those ES's, any failure would always be a critical failure. The corresponding provision doesn't exist on the other side. It really is the case that if you're stuck rolling with an Effective Skill of 4 or less, your only way to succeed is by critically succeeding with a 3 or a 4.

The chart below spells out the results.

Results for Roll vs. ES CS = Critical Success S = Success F = Failure CF = Critical Failure

For essential skills in the range 7-14, it's always simply that a roll of 3-4 is a critical success, a roll of 17-18 is a critical failure, and otherwise a roll at or under your ES is a success, and a roll over your ES is a failure. It's only at the extremes of essential skills at 6 and under or 15 and over that you need to remember the exceptions.

In some contexts, rules spell out the consequence of a critical in a given situation; the rest of the time the GM makes something up.

Critical results don't play a role in determining who wins or loses a contest. Critical results are independent of size of margin. You could have a critical failure with a Margin of Failure of only 1, or a success whose Margin of Success is 10 or more but which still isn't a critical success (e.g., your ES is 17 and your roll is 7). Whether a success or failure was critical is a qualitative consideration. Margin of Success or failure is a quantitative measure, and that's the only one you care about in determining the winner of a contest.

For a given roll, sometimes you care about criticals but not at all about margins, sometimes you care about margins but not criticals, and sometimes, you care about both. Specific rules for the situation may specify one or the other or both. But you can always count on criticals not mattering in determining the winner or loser of a contest.

A critical success on an attack roll is a critical hit. The defender doesn't get to defend – the attack automatically hit and you skip to determining damage. If the attack roll was a 3 exactly, it automatically does the maximum damage possible for the attack. For a critical success without rolling a 3, you roll for damage normally: bypassing the defender's defense is still an exceptional result.

Each skill has a controlling attribute.

IQ is the Controlling Attribute for nearly all mental and social skills. Perception controls a few skills, like Fishing, Detect Lies, Lip Reading, Observation, Survival, Scrounging, and Tracking. Will controls Intimidation and very little else (outside of games with supernatural elements).

Dexterity is the Controlling Attribute for nearly all skills related to physical activities (including combat skills), except for the few covered by Health. Health governs Lifting, Sex Appeal, Singing and endurance-based activities like Hiking, Running, Skiing, and Swimming. Strength, uniquely, is not the Controlling Attribute for any skills.

Each skill also has a difficulty level. The difficulty levels are Easy, Average, Hard, and Very Hard. When you look at the skill descriptions, they're listed with their Controlling Attribute and difficulty level like so:

Swimming HT/Easy

Very Hard skills are very rare. Mundane modern settings have just Biology, Physics, and Surgery (all controlled by IQ). GURPS Lite simply omits mentioning Very Hard; I was tempted to follow suit.

For most skills, even if you don't have the skill, you can attempt it by defaulting to its Controlling Attribute, with a steep penalty. Usually that penalty is -4 for Easy skills, -5 for Average, -6 for Hard, and Very Hard skills usually don't allow defaulting to an attribute at all. There are exceptions to all of the above and you'll need to look to individual skill descriptions for whether a skill offers defaulting to its attribute and what the penalty is.

The ledge crumbles, and Hector is dumped into the lake. He doesn't have Swimming, and his Health is 10. Swimming has the typical Easy skill's -4 penalty for defaulting to the Controlling Attribute, and the GM judges there aren't further modifiers, so Hector needs to roll a 6 or less. He rolls a 5 and just manages to doggie paddle to shallow water.

If you have been isolated from literally all contact with a given skill's subject matter, you can't attempt a roll by defaulting to its attribute. Having seen the activity on TV or having encountered occasional references to an academic subject filtered through pop culture is generally good enough to try it.

We've referred to things like a character "having Knife at 11" throughout. But fundamentally, a character's skill at something is relative to the character's score for that skill's Controlling Attribute. Bob has Dexterity at 11 and Knife at +0. Knife at 11 is calculated from those.

Knife is an Easy skill. Beginners at Easy skills have those skills at the level of the Controlling Attribute +0, i.e., at the level of the Controlling Attribute. As they improve, they'd be said to have it at Dexterity +1, Dexterity +2, etc.

Beginners at Average skills start with the skill at Attribute -1. For Hard it's Attribute -2, and for Very Hard, it's Attribute -3.

We won't say much about character generation yet, but when you create a character, your attribute scores, skills, advantages are bought with a budget of character points. Disadvantages have negative cost, thus giving you back Character Points you can spend on other things. Buying a skill at beginning level always costs 1 Character Point, whether it's Easy or Very Hard. But that one Character Point gets you the skill at the level of the Controlling Attribute for the Easy skill and at attribute -3 for the Very Hard skill.

Those values are total, not cumulative. An Easy skill at Attribute +1 costs 2 Character Points, not 2 Character Points in addition to one Character Point for starting at Attribute +0.

Since Bob has Knife at Dexterity +0 and we know it's an Easy skill, we know he's a beginner at it. If he were a beginner at Filch, a Dexterity/Average skill, he'd have it at Dexterity -1. Karate is Dexterity/Hard, so as a beginner he'd have at at Dexterity -2. There aren't any Very Hard skills controlled by Dexterity to continue the example with, but if there were a Dexterity/Very Hard Quantum Volleyball skill, as a beginner, he'd have it at Dexterity -3. Each of those would have cost him one Character Point.

Since the penalties for defaulting to a skill's Controlling Attribute are usually -4 for Easy, -5 for Average, and -6 for Hard, you can keep in mind that the difference between making an unskilled attempt at something and trying it as a beginner at the skill is (usually) 4.

So having a skill at a beginning level versus not knowing it at all makes a big difference. How big a difference it is in practice depends on your attribute score, the skill's difficulty, and your skill level. As noted previously, a roll against 12 is three times as likely to succeed as a roll at 8, so if you have an Easy skill's Controlling Attribute at 12, having the skill at beginning level triples your chances… provided that that particular Easy skill offers the typical -4 penalty to default to attribute.

Occasionally, you might roll for a skill relative to a different attribute from normal.

Sam has Traps at IQ +2, or 13. And that's the roll she'd make to build a trap. But when she says she wants to check a room for detection devices, the GM tells her to make a Perception-based Traps roll instead. Her Perception is 13, so her Base Skill is 13 + 2 = 15. She rolls a 14 and succeeds – the GM tells her she found an infrared beam. Sam wants to disable it, so the GM asks her to make a Dexterity-based Traps roll this time.

This is sometimes called "floating" a skill to a different attribute, though that term doesn't occur in the rules.

The rules don't often specifically call for floating skills, but many experienced GMs use them frequently.

It's even possible for there to be a Strength-based skill roll, though that would be unusual.

A rockslide has trapped Jill in a cave. The GM calls for a Strength-based Survival (Mountains) roll for her to safely create a passage.

You might have noticed that being a more highly skilled fighter doesn't make you any better at defending yourself by dodging. Dodge is derived from your attributes. But there are two other Active Defenses, both of which are derived from your skills. Parry allows you to deflect an attack, and Block lets you block it with something like a shield. (We'll get to Block later.)

A Parry Active Defense value is half of your relevant skill (rounded down) + 3. If you have several hand-to-hand weapon skills, you'll have a Parry value for each. You can use that value for a Parry if you have that weapon in hand.

Alice has Shortsword at 11, so she could Parry with her baton at 11/2 (rounding down) + 3 = 8.

Small and light weapons like knives have a penalty to Parry. We'll add another column to our weapons table to reflect this. (Some other weapons offer a bonus to Parry, but we haven't gotten to any of them yet.)

You can attempt to Parry once during the Reactive Phase. If you chose a Ready maneuver to ready a weapon, you can immediately parry with that weapon during the Reactive Phase.

The All-out Defense (Increased Parry) maneuver grants +2 to all Parry attempts during your Reactive Phase.

Basic Move is another secondary characteristic – it defaults to your Basic Speed rounded down. Both Alice and Bob, above, would have a Basic Move of 5, though Bob's Basic Speed is higher. Basic Move is the basis for your Move score. We'll see later that your Move score is your Basic Move after any penalty for encumbrance, but for now we'll treat them as equal.

Move is another combat maneuver – you can use it to move up to your Move in yards in one Active Phase. You can attempt Active Defenses normally. So Alice could move up to 5 yards.

The Concentrate maneuver is the counterpart to Ready for mental actions. You'd use it for anything involving a roll against a skill based on Perception, Will, or IQ (or against those attributes themselves), or anything else primarily mental (even if there might be a minor physical component to the action). For instance, you might try to Intimidate a foe in combat (talk is a free action, but for anything calling for a roll the GM would probably call for a Concentrate maneuver.)

If you're attempting something that requires multiple turns and you take an injury or attempt an Active Defense before you're done, you have to roll vs. Will at -3. If you fail, your concentration is ruined and you would have to start the attempt over. (Concentration sees more use in games with magic – it's the maneuver you use if you want to cast a spell.)

Earlier, we said you could attempt only one Active Defense to any given attack. All-out Defense: Double creates an exception to that. If your first defense against a given attack fails, you can attempt a different Active Defense against it. If the first defense was a Parry, a Parry with your other arm counts as a different Active Defense. Like all All-Out Defense maneuvers, selecting it means you give up any chance to attack this turn.

Given that you can always dodge as many times as you need to, and your number of parries is limited, with an All-out Defense: Double you'll generally want to attempt a Dodge for your first defense.

You make two separate melee attacks against the same target, rolling for each. This may be the same kind of attack twice, or two different kinds of attacks. Attacking with two weapons requires a ready weapon in each hand. Off-hand penalties apply normally. Like all All-Out Attacks, selecting it means giving up any chance to attempt an Active Defense during the Reactive Phase and any attacker's success against you is determined wholly by their attack roll.

Two attacks don't do you any good if they both fail. If your attack's Essential Skill is low, you might be better off with All-out Attack: Determined for a single attack at +4.

Influence is necessarily an exception to PC-NPC equivalency. The mechanics are asymmetric here. Players always choose how their characters act, so of course a PC's reaction can't be subject to a reaction roll. But NPCs or other PCs can attempt to influence a PC. It's addressed with a normal influence roll – a Quick Contest of the influencer's relevant skill vs. the other's Will, like normal. If the influencer wins the contest, note their margin of victory.

In subsequent relevant rolls involving the two, that margin of victory applies as a bonus or penalty, whichever is appropriate, at the GM's discretion.

There isn't a mechanical effect defined for when the influencer ties or loses; the PC simply reacts as they see fit.

Some skills specify they can be used for influence rolls under particular circumstances – Law to influence a judge, or Games to influence a referee. The GM might allow others, e.g., Engineering (Civil) to persuade another civil engineer that there's a pressing reason to evacuate the building. Several skills allow you to make an ordinary Success Roll where success provides a bonus to your reaction roll in a particular situation, e.g., Administration to deal with a bureaucrat (see also: Carousing, Connoisseur, Politics). Or merely having a skill at all might help – Merchant at any level automatically means at least a +1 on reaction rolls when trying to buy or sell.

The 6 skills listed above as generally allowing Influence Rolls – Diplomacy, Fast-Talk, Intimidation, Savoir-Faire, Sex Appeal, Streetwise – all have other uses, too. Consult the rules for details.

Notice that an Influence Roll substantially flattens the potential outcomes to either Good or Bad (or potentially Very Good with Sex Appeal). It's possible you could have done better at random with a plain Reaction Roll. GURPS Social Engineering offers an alternative where the Margin of Success or Failure of the Influence Roll determines the reaction and offers a broader range of results.

After someone has received injuries, someone needs to bandage them. It takes a minute, so isn't a practical option during combat. It requires a First Aid roll. On success, it restores 1 HP; on failure it does nothing.

Subsequent to that (the bandaging has to happen first), someone with the First Aid skill can attempt treating shock. Assuming the aid-giver is able to keep the patient under reasonably calm, comfortable conditions for at least 10 minutes, the aid-giver can roll against their First Aid skill. The results are:

Having a first aid kit grants a +1 to relevant First Aid rolls; having a more extensive crash kit grants +2. Only one person can try Treating Shock, and only one attempt is allowed.

If you're injured' then for each full day of rest you have you can roll vs. Health to see if you have natural recovery of 1 HP. If you're under the care of a competent doctor, i.e., someone with Physician at 12 or more, you get +1 to the roll; the GM may apply other modifiers depending on just how restful the day really was or wasn't. Also, if you're under a doctor's care, each day the doctor can roll against their Physician score. Results are:

These results for the Physician roll are on top of whatever natural recovery the patient did (or didn't) have.

If you're unconscious, but have at least 1 HP, you awaken automatically in about 15 minutes. This circumstance could apply, for instance, if you failed an unconsciousness check at 0 HP but someone restored 1 HP to you through successful bandaging.

At 0 or fewer HP but above -1 x maxHP, each hour make a Health roll. On success, you come to and can act normally. You don't need to make unconsciousness checks to continue to stay conscious, even if a new combat begins… until you receive further injury. Then you must immediately make an unconsciousness check to remain conscious, and make further checks at the start of each of your turns.

If you're unconscious and your HP are at -1 x maxHP or less, you're officially in bad shape. After 12 hours, make a roll against Health. If you succeed, you're conscious. You're in the same state as described above when you regain consciousness when you're at 0 HP or fewer but above -1 x maxHP – you're stable and don't need to make further unconsciousness checks… unless you receive further injury. If you fail the Health roll, you'll need surgery to have a chance to survive. We won't go into those rules.

In general, you can't make medical skill rolls (including for bandaging and treating shock) to heal yourself. The GM may allow given cases that seem plausible, but expect a substantial penalty, for instance -1 for every HP below your maximum you are.

Rapid Healing: +5 to any Health rolls to recover lost HP (requires Health of 10 or more)

Very Rapid Healing: as Rapid Healing, but success means healing 2 HP instead of just one (requires Health of 12 or more)

Rapid Healing and Very Rapid Healing are the first examples we've seen of prerequisite conditions for having advantages (beyond the mutual exclusivity of some advantages/disadvantages). DFRPG has a more heroic version of Very Rapid Healing; consult it for details.

In GURPS, even 1 HP represents a significant injury. Everyday scratches and bruises are 0 HP.

Getting low on HP is bad. Try to avoid it. Losing 1/3 your HP – about 3 for an average person – is a big deal and many NPC combatants would surrender or run at that point. Anyone still fighting after losing 2/3 their HP either doesn't have much sense of self-preservation or is choosing to fight on at risk of death. PCs would do well to remember those guidelines too.

That said, with most weapons it's unlikely to kill someone in combat outright – before the death checks would begin at -maxHP, a combatant is likely to have needed two or more unconsciousness checks. Unlike the death checks, those happen every turn instead of only with fresh injury, and they're at a penalty when your HP drops very low. So odds are that a combatant will be taken out of a fight by failing an unconsciousness check, not by dying.

Most muscle-powered weapons, that is. Sudden death is a real possibility with a massive injury, as we'll see eventually when we get to guns.

There is no official list of essential skills. It's expected that GMs will define what skills are allowed in a game. It's one of the things that individuates campaigns.

Here's an incomplete list of skills that might be used in a modern setting (omitting combat skills). A few of them are particular to the modern world, but most could play a role in nearly any setting. Some of them we've seen before; most of them we haven't. The ones marked with a dagger (†) require specialties, like Savoir-Faire (High Society).

Everyday: Computer Operation, Cooking, Housekeeping, Knot-tying

Athletic: Acrobatics, Climbing, Hiking, Jumping, Running, Sports†, Swimming, Throwing

Social: Acting, Body Language, Carousing, Detect Lies, Diplomacy, Fast-Talk, Gambling, Gesture, Intimidation, Panhandling, Politics, Public Speaking, Savoir-Faire†, Sex Appeal

Police: Criminology, Forensics, Interrogation, Observation, Search

Military: Camouflage, Cryptography, Intelligence Analysis, Leadership, Strategy†, Tactics

Criminal/Street: Disguise, Filch, Forced Entry, Forgery, Holdout, Lockpicking, Pickpocket, Scrounging, Sleight of Hand, Smuggling, Stealth, Shadowing, Streetwise, Urban Survival

Medical: Diagnosis, First Aid, Pharmacy†, Physician, Poisons, Surgery

Outdoor/Exploration: Naturalist, Survival†, Tracking

Knowledge: Area Knowledge†, Current Affairs†, Connoisseur†, Games†

Scholarly: Research, Teaching, Writing

Social Sciences/Humanities: Anthropology, Archaeology, Geography†, History†, Law†, Philosophy†, Psychology, Sociology

Design/Invention: Architecture, Computer Programming, Engineer†

Business: Accounting, Administration, Merchant

Natural Sciences: Astronomy, Biology, Chemistry, Geology, Mathematics, Meteorology, Paleontology†, Physics

Arts/Entertainment: Artist†, Dancing, Musical Instrument†, Performance, Poetry

Technical: Electronics Operation, Explosives, Photography

Repair/Maintenance: Electrician, Electronics Repair†, Mechanic

Vehicles: Bicycling, Driving†

The categories above are from the official freely available GURPS Skill Categories list. I'll note:

• the categories are just for presentation; presence or absence in a category doesn't have significance in the rules
• many skills occur in multiple categories in the full list; for brevity's sake, I picked just one for each I mentioned
• there are a few whole categories I omitted
• the official list itself notes "these classifications are suggestions, not rules. If you disagree with a skill's placement, change it!"

You can find the complete skill descriptions in the Basic Set for all of these and many more, as well as the defined specialties for skill categories. Many of them are in Gurps Lite, DFRPG, and Discworld, though the latter two won't have skills particular to the modern world. Either of GURPS Action 1 or GURPS Monster Hunters 1 provide their own skill lists for the modern world.

A lot of things above are marked with a dagger to indicate a required specialty. Here are some examples, none of them exhaustive:

• Artist: Drawing, Painting, Sculpting
• Connoisseur: Literature, Music, Wine
• Driving: Car, Motorcycle, Construction Equipment
• Electronics Operation (or Electronics Repair): Communications, Scientific, Surveillance
• Engineer: Civil, Electronics, Material
• Law: US Family, EU Contract, Canada Criminal
• Survival: Woodlands, Jungle, Desert

Skills with specialties are always written with the specialty parenthesized after the skill category, e.g., Law (EU Contract). To be clear, Artist is not a skill. Artist (Painting) is a skill.

Sometimes two skills seem relevant for a task. For instance, this room is smaller than it should be given the layout of the house due to a secret room waiting to be discovered. Perception or Architecture? Why not both?

A Success Roll against a complementary skill can provide a modifier to a subsequent Success Roll against the master skill where success or failure makes for +1 or -1, with a crit adding another +1 or -1. In summary:

For noticing the room discrepancy, that could be Architecture as complementary and Perception as master. Having noticed it, finding a secret door could be Perception as complementary to Traps.

For some cases where rules suggest rolling a skill with a different attribute from its Controlling Attribute, you might consider letting that attribute be a complementary roll to a master skill roll. Or vice versa.

This is a rule you won't find in the Basic Set – it was first published in GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 2: Dungeons in 2008. You will find it in numerous GURPS supplements and the DFRPG; it's so useful that it's been repeated frequently. You can find it in the preview for Gurps Action 2: Exploits and a more detailed exploration in "Full Complement" in Pyramid #65: Alternate GURPS III.

There are several skills related to knowledge. You're in Texarkana wondering where's the nearest place you can buy bandages at 3 AM? If you're lucky, someone has Area Knowledge (Texarkana) and a successful skill roll would mean that person would know exactly where. You could have Area Knowledge of something as small as a neighborhood or as large as a large nation, but the bigger it gets, the more general your potential knowledge becomes. Area Knowledge defaults to IQ -4, but only for places the character has lived.

Geography, similarly, can be specialized to small or large, but what you might know becomes more and more general the larger your specialty is.

Current Affairs requires a specialty like Pop Culture or Politics or Business. It gives you a chance to recognize names that have been in the news and maybe some common knowledge about them.

Specialties of Connoisseur can play a role in social situations to establish your bona fides. They also let you know what's valuable or not in their domain, and thus whether something's a fair price when you're buying or selling. The Basic Set emphasized high culture subjects as possible specialties of Connoisseur; later supplements explicitly included Beer, Cars, Coins, Guns, Stamps, and many more.

Naturally, having an academic skill means knowing the basics of the field and being able to roll for knowing particular things with a bonus or penalty based on how obscure it is.

History requires a specialty, which might mean a large region during a discrete time period, e.g., China: Han Dynasty, or a discrete region throughout a long period, e.g., Sweden.

Research is a skill that isn't specialized and covers researching any kind of knowledge in a library, or newspaper morgue, or in a county assessor's records, etc. Academic skills might be complementary to Research for particular tasks.

If you figure someone has to have heard something and you're asking around for who might know, Area Knowledge might help you find appropriate bars in which to try Carousing to see if people might let information slip to a new drinking buddy. Streetwise might also point you in the right direction. Or a successful roll with relevant Savoir-Faire specialty could point you to someone.

Once you're asking questions of someone in particular, any skill allowing an Influence Roll might get answers with a Good reaction (as noted above). A relevant Connoisseur or Savoir-Faire specialty or other skills might be complementary, depending on whom and how you're asking.

We've discussed using a skill you don't have by defaulting to its attribute, i.e., rolling against the Controlling Attribute at a penalty. Most skills also offer defaults to related skills at a penalty.

There's no generic pattern to what defaults exist and what the penalties are – you have to look to the skills' descriptions. For instance, Broadsword and Shortsword default to each other at -2, Shortsword defaults to Knife at -4, and Knife defaults to Shortsword at -3.

Due to some contrived circumstance, Alice and Bob have swapped weapons. Alice has Shortsword at 11, so she can use Bob's knife at 11-3 = 8. Bob isn't doing as well – he has Knife at 11, and so he would use Alice's baton at 11-4 = 7 for Shortsword.

But you can only use defaults of the skills you actually have – you can't chain skill defaulting. Maybe you have Survival (Woodlands) at 16. Naturalist defaults to any of the Survival skills at -3, so you could roll for Naturalist tasks at 13. Biologist defaults to Naturalist-3… but you'd need to really have the Naturalist skill to take advantage of that default. You couldn't use your Survival (Woodlands) to roll for Biology at 10. You'd be stuck rolling against IQ-6 like most people without Biology. (Though Biology is Very Hard, it allows a default to IQ-6.)

Where skills have required specialties, it's often the case that the specialties default to each other (often at -4, but the exact penalty varies). Engineering, Driving, Electronics Operation and Electronics Repair specialties default to each other at -4. Aquatic Survival specialties default to each other at -4, but land-based Survival specialties default to each other at -3. Law specialties default to each other at -4 when the region or field differ, e.g. between US Contract and EU Contract or between US Contract and US Criminal. If both are different, it's -6.

Among skill defaults and attribute defaults you might have several choices of how to roll something. You always get to choose the best.

Some skills are prerequisites of others. You can't have Surgery without having at least one of First Aid or Physician. You can't be a Physicist or an Engineer without Mathematics (Applied). But most skills don't have any prerequisites; there isn't a complicated skill tree to think about.

Prerequisites and defaults are some of the ways GURPS' lengthy skill list pays off. Knowing a lot about some given thing often means knowing at least a little about several other things. GURPS provides a mechanical representation of this; it's simply outside the granularity of a system with a short skill list.

But you don't need the long skill list.

Wildcard skills represent whole bodies of knowledge, often corresponding to professions. They're listed with an exclamation point, e.g., Hacker!, Cat Burglar!, Doctor!, and are thus also called bang skills. The rules' examples of Wildcard Skills define fairly precisely what skills in what contexts a given Wildcard Skill corresponds to in terms of the normal skill list.

But you could also play fast and loose and simply say that a character has Con Artist! at 14 and Unarmed Combat! at 12 and rule on the fly where the skills apply, basically treating GURPS like it has a short list of broad skills.

Wildcard skills are defined as a cinematic option (and aren't mentioned at all in GURPS Lite). They're such a powerful simplifying device that I'm making an exception to this tutorial's avoidance of cinematic options. They appear in the Basic Set and in GURPS Supers; they're used extensively in the GURPS Action and GURPS Monster Hunter series; they're examined most closely in GURPS Power-ups 7: Wildcard Skills.

All hand-to-hand combat, both unarmed and with weapons, everything we've talked about so far, is melee combat. If you want to deal damage from afar, we need to talk about ranged combat. They may not play a major role as weapons in the modern world, but bows are still here and they make a good introduction to ranged combat in GURPS.

Since any given ranged weapon only does one type of damage, we'll use just one Damage column and the abbreviations 'thr' for Thrust (and, later, 'sw' for swing).

Individual bows, themselves, have Strength ratings. The damage you do with a bow is based on the Strength of the bow. Having a Strength greater than the bow you're using doesn't do you any good and you simply cannot use a bow if its Strength is higher than yours. Unless noted otherwise, it's assumed that archers always get a bow whose Strength is the same as their own, so issues of inability to pull it (or of doing Damage corresponding to Strength less than an archer's own) would only come up if someone grabbed someone else's bow in an emergency.

Range is expressed as a multiplier of the bow's Strength – the result is how many yards you can shoot.

A composite bow of Strength 13 has a range of 13 x 20 = 260 yards.

The Strength listed above is as low a Strength as a bow can be made with. The highest is three times the listed Strength above, e.g., 21 for a short bow. In a mundane game, being so strong that you can't find a bow to match your strength is unlikely to come up.

You'll notice that Range is enormous. Anyone with average or better Strength (10+) could shoot 200 yards with a Strength 10 composite bow. But it's extremely unlikely they'd hit their target at that range. Ranged attacks targeting things further away get progressively more difficult, according to this range table:

That's a shortened and less detailed range table. For the full one, consult GURPS Lite or the official character sheet.

As a defender, you can't Parry arrows – they're too fast. But you can try to Dodge per the usual limitation that you can see your attacker and are aware the attack is coming. You're not Dodging the arrow; you're Dodging your best guess of the archer's aim.

It takes two Ready maneuvers before you can shoot an arrow from a bow: one to nock the arrow, and one to draw the bow.

The version of All-out Attack: Determined with a +4 to attack we saw before is only for melee. Ranged attacks have their own version of All-out Attack: Determined that offers just a +1 to hit. There is no All-out Attack: Strong for Ranged attacks.

Ranged Weapons have a bonus to attack if you take time to aim them – each weapon has an Accuracy rating.

Aim is another maneuver. When you choose Aim, you specify a particular target. On your next turn, an Attack or All-out Attack maneuver against that target gets the weapon's Accuracy as a bonus on the attack roll. Continuing to aim for 1 or 2 turns more gets another +1 per turn, but there's no further bonus for aiming for longer.

The +5 bonus one could get by aiming a composite bow for 3 seconds could go a long way toward cancelling distance penalties for long shots.

As with Concentration, Aim is difficult to maintain if circumstances split your attention. If you attempt an Active Defense while Aiming, your Aim is spoiled and you lose any benefit. If you receive an injury, roll vs. Will to maintain your aim. Concentrate's less demanding than Aim regarding Active Defense – Concentrate isn't lost providing you succeed at a Will-3 roll. But Aim's easier to maintain in the face of injury than Concentrate, because it takes only an unpenalized Will roll instead of Concentrate's Will-3.

Throwing a weapon is another muscle-powered ranged attack. Different weapons have their own distinct skills, like Thrown Weapon (Axe/Mace) and Thrown Weapon (Knife).

Longer, heavier weapons that spin as they're thrown, like a throwing axe, do Swinging Damage. Other thrown weapons do Thrust Damage (i.e., lightweight weapons like knives, or weapons that fly straight, like a spear.)

For thrown weapons, the listed range is multiplied by your own Strength.

And the range in the above table is actually just the range up to which you can do full damage, not your maximum range. At or beyond that range, there's a further range you can target and make an attack roll for, but in that range your Basic Damage is halved. The official names of the multipliers to Strength that define your ranges are Half-Damage Range (1/2D) and Maximum Range (Max), respectively. Those numbers describe the range, inclusive, in which you do half damage – it starts at 1/2D and ends at Max. Any range less than that is full damage. We'll revise Range for the weapons table to list 1/2D first, then Max Range. Adding the longer range in which half-damage is done gives us:

When taking the half damage, you round down, but the usual rule applies that for non-crushing damage there's a minimum of 1.

There's a 1/2D and Max Range for bows, too, that we omitted earlier. Given the range penalties involved, you probably won't often see people succeeding with archery at or beyond their 1/2D range.

Molly has Strength 12. She could throw a throwing axe or a spear up to 12 yards, and a large knife up to 9 yards (0.8 * 12, rounded down).

Molly is throwing a throwing axe at someone 10 yards away. Her Thrown Weapon (Axe/Mace) skill is 16. She's at a -4 penalty due to the range, but she rolls an 11 and succeeds. Her target attempted to Dodge, but failed, so she rolls for damage. Damage for the throwing axe is Swing +2; for Strength 12, that means a total of 1d+4. She rolls a 3 for a total Basic Damage of 7.

Bob has Strength 10 and Thrown Weapon (Knife) at 13. His 1/2D Range through Max Range is 8-15 yards, the range in which he'd do half damage. He does full damage at anything less than 8 yards. He throws a large knife at the back of someone wearing a leather motorcycle jacket 10 yards away. The throw is at -4 for the range, so he needs to roll 9 or less. He rolls a 7. The target was unaware of the attack, so doesn't get an Active Defense. The knife does unmodified Thrust Damage, which is 1d-2 for Strength 10. He rolls a 2, for a result of 0, but a cutting (as opposed to crushing) weapon does a minimum of 1, so it's at 1. He's beyond the range at which he does full damage, so it's cut in half. But a cutting weapon does a minimum of 1, so the ultimate result for Basic Damage is still 1. After all of that, the leather jacket's DR of 1 reduces the Penetrating Damage to 0. But now the jacket-wearer is aware of Bob, and he's not happy with him.

With Accuracy score 0, like throwing knives have, your first Aim maneuver does you no good, but you can continue to aim for one or two more turns for a +1 or +2 bonus.

They may not get a lot of play in the modern world outside of police riot gear, but it's possible someone could use a shield, which brings us to the final Active Defense, Block. Block is the use of a shield or a cloak slung over your arm to absorb or deflect an attack.

Shield and Cloak are each their own skill, and your Block score for either is half that skill (rounded down) + 3, analogous to how Parry is derived from the relevant weapon skill.

Shields or cloaks have a defense bonus (DB).

This defense bonus is added to all Active Defenses – Dodge, Parry, or Block – against attacks coming from your front or from your shield or cloak-hand side (Obviously, determining that is going to be an inexact science if you're not playing with hex maps and carefully tracking facing.)

Unlike Parry, you can attempt to use Block against an archer. You can also try to Block any attack you could Parry, i.e., any muscle-powered ranged weapon, or any melee attack, whether with a weapon or unarmed.

You can only Block once during the Reactive Phase (but the defense bonus for using a shield or cloak is added to any number of applicable Dodge or Parry attempts you might make.)

A large shield gets in your own way: holding one imposes a -2 penalty to your attacks.

You probably won't be surprised that there's an All-Out Defense: Increased Block maneuver that gives +2 to block.

To reiterate, it's always a requirement that you can perceive an attack and know where it's coming from to be able to attempt an Active Defense.

Dodge means trying to not be where the attack is. If it's successful, there was no contact.

Parry means using your arm or a weapon to deflect an attack away. This includes things martial artists might call a block, but in GURPS terms it's an unarmed parry.

Block means using a cloak or shield to absorb an attack and/or to confuse the attacker.

The border between Parry and Block isn't absolute in terms of what it looks like in the game world. In a particular case, a Parry could mean using your weapon to absorb the force of a blow or a Block could mean deflecting an attack with your cloak. But there's a distinct border between them in the game mechanics. An Active Defense with a weapon (or a limb) is a Parry. With a shield or a cloak, it's a Block.

We originally said you can make one Parry during the Reactive Phase and later corrected that to one Parry per arm. We're going to further correct it now: you can Parry multiple times with the same arm, but the additional parry is at -4. Further parries are possible, but the -4 per additional parry is cumulative, so a third with the same arm would be at -8, etc. (It'd take truly desperate circumstances for your best option to be attempting something at -8.) This applies to any Parry you attempt during the Reactive Phase, whether it's based on a weapon skill, an unarmed combat skill, or unskilled unarmed combat using Dexterity.

In terms of what attacks you can use them with, Parry is narrowest and Dodge is widest.

Parry can be attempted against any melee attack, unarmed or with a weapon, and against thrown weapons, i.e., muscle-powered ranged weapons that aren't missile weapons. Against small thrown weapons like knives, there's a -2 penalty to Parry; against all other thrown weapons, it's -1.

Block can be attempted against any melee attack and any muscle-powered ranged weapon, including missile weapons.

Dodge can be attempted against any melee or ranged attack. Spoiler: yes, even guns (but you wouldn't get to add a shield or cloak's DB in that case).

Number of attempts allowed during the Reactive Phase:

There's one very specific wrinkle to unarmed parries of thrown weapon attacks. On a critical success on the Parry, or any success with a Margin of Success of 5+, the defender safely caught the weapon.

A bonus to defenses in general sounds pretty handy. You might wonder why everyone doesn't carry a shield all the time.

Besides Damage and HP, Strength determines a third secondary characteristic, Basic Lift (BL). Basic Lift is calculated from (Strength * Strength)/5, rounded up or down to the nearest whole number, another exception to always rounding down. But you don't need to remember that because you can look it up in a table.

I've mentioned that Strength is exceptional in not being the Controlling Attribute for any skills and because GMs often allow a higher maximum for normal humans than for other attributes. It's also the only attribute that's quantifiable in real world terms. Basic Lift is the amount of weight one can lift one-handed in one second. Here's a revised Strength table that adds Basic Lift.

Basic Lift also determines how much you can carry (relative to your Basic Lift) with what degree of encumbrance. Your Move score is defined as your Basic Move as modified by your Encumbrance per the table below.

So someone with Strength 10 and thus a Basic Lift of 20 can carry up to 20 lbs. with their full Move. If they were carrying 50 lbs., that would put them beyond their Light Encumbrance's upper limit of 40 lbs. (2 x their BL), so their Move would be .6 x their Basic Move. When you compute Move, round down, but it can't be reduced below 1.

Encumbrance does not affect Basic Speed

It also provides a penalty to Dodge (notice that the penalty is just the negative of the level). Like with Move, the penalty can't reduce Dodge below 1. The same penalty applies to Climbing, Stealth, Judo, and Karate skill rolls; Swimming rolls get twice the penalty.

In this tutorial's very first example, Sam was at a -1 on her Climbing roll due to a heavy pack. We now know that her encumbrance was Light, i.e. that she was carrying more than her Basic Lift, but not more than twice that.

For slow to average humans with Basic Moves of 3 to 5, if you just apply the Encumbrance Level as a penalty to Basic Move, same as you would for Dodge or Stealth, you get the same results as the multiplicative modifier.

Even on the weak end of average, people can carry a lot… at a steep penalty to Move, Dodge, Climbing, Stealth, Judo and Karate.

To address the point we opened with about why you wouldn't carry a shield all the time, a medium shield weighs 15 lbs. In combination with even a modicum of equipment, that's likely to push someone of average Strength into encumbrance penalties.

Considering only lightweight weapons allowed me to avoid discussing minimum strengths. Weapons have a minimum Strength to use them without penalty. For every point of Strength you are below that minimum, you're at -1 to your attack rolls with it. There isn't a further penalty to damage – since Damage depends on Strength, your Damage is already penalized with low Strength.

Minimum Strengths don't apply to Natural Weapons like punches or kicks. Here's our new weapons table. We'll add the broadsword to have a weapon with a minimum Strength greater than 8.

George has a Strength of 8 and is wielding a broadsword. Since his Strength is 2 less than the broadsword's minimum Strength, his attacks will be at -2.

The rules don't state that there's a penalty to Parry with a weapon for which you don't have the minimum Strength. Following the example from off-hand parries, a GM might rule that applying a -1 penalty to Parry for every -2 someone is below the minimum Strength is appropriate.

Thrown weapons also have minimum Strengths.

We've already seen the 'Strength' column in a weapons table, with bows.

We said then that it represented as low a strength as a bow could be made, but that's not quite true. Really, the Strength listed for bows is the same sort of minimum Strength that applies to melee weapons – ones below which you're at a penalty to attack. But that's not likely to come up with bows. A Strength 9 would-be archer picking up a Strength 10 regular bow is going to be stymied by being completely unable to draw the string. The penalty to hit wouldn't be relevant.

Someone could make a regular bow whose Strength is 9 if they really wanted. Anyone with Strength of 9 or higher could shoot it and if they hit someone, it would do 1d Basic Damage (Strength 9 does Thrust Dmg 1d-2, and a regular bow does Thrust +2). But the Strength 9 archer would be at a -1 penalty to attack with it because regardless of its draw weight, the size and weight of the bow itself are more than they can handle comfortably. There's not a lot of demand for bows with a draw weight weak enough to accommodate an archer for whom the bow will always be unwieldy, so functionally those Strength values are also the minimums for the particular Strengths you'll expect to see for the various kinds of bows.

Move and Attack is another maneuver. You can move up to your Move and make an attack (during or after moving). You can move before or after the attack, or split the movement. As with Move, facing changes arent' that well defined; you could use the same rule of them suggested there.

During the Reactive Phase, you may attempt to Dodge or Block as an Active Defense, but you can't Parry. With a melee attack, you're at a -4 penalty and your maximum Effective Skill is 9. With a ranged weapon, your penalty is the weapon's Bulk or -2, whichever is worse, but there isn't the imposition of a maximum Effective Skill. We haven't met Bulk before:

With a melee attack, no matter how good you are, you have less than a 40% chance of succeeding at your attack roll, and likely less with that steep -4 penalty. But you can move just as far as with the regular Move maneuver, so if you wanted to move anyway, it's an opportunity to fit in a desperate, unlikely attack for free.

Or, if you really want to move but don't need to move more than 1/2 your Move, take All-out Defense: Increased Dodge and you get the movement and +2 to your Dodge.

If you kick during combat and miss, you have to roll vs. Dexterity to remain standing. If you fail, you fall supine. I didn't mention this until now since we didn't know how to deal with the consequences of falling.

Injuries can have more consequence than just crossing off HP. Once your current HP is less than 1/3 of your maxHP, you're reeling. Your Move and Dodge are halved (round up in both cases). These penalties are cumulative with encumbrance penalties. Per usual arithmetic precedence, halve Dodge from reeling before applying the penalty for encumbrance. Reeling never reduces Move or Dodge below 1, whether alone or in combination with encumbrance penalties.

This persists until your HP reach or exceed 1/3 your maxHP.

Whenever you receive an injury, you suffer shock equal to the HP of the injury, to a maximum of -4. Your shock penalty applies to any rolls against Dexterity, IQ, Will, or Perception, or any skill rolls based on any of them. That's equivalent to saying it applies to all attribute and skill rolls except rolls against Strength or Health or skill rolls based on them.

This temporary penalty to Dexterity doesn't cause Active Defenses or Basic Speed or Basic Move to be recalculated.

If you receive multiple injuries during one Reactive Phase, the shock is simply cumulative to the -4 maximum.

Shock lasts for the remainder of the Reactive Phase in which it was inflicted through the end of your subsequent Active Phase. If it comes up that you're attempting a roll against an affected attribute or skill during your Reactive Phase (because, for instance, an attacker does something that calls for a Quick Contest with you), the penalty would apply. It definitely does affect combat skills, so it affects any attacks you make on your subsequent Active Phase. But at the end of your Active Phase, the shock is over – it doesn't continue into another Reactive Phase.

I have to come clean here. Will and Perception are based on IQ, so they're actually Secondary Characteristics, not attributes (though they're still called Controlling Attributes in relation to their skills). Strength, Dexterity, IQ, and Health are the four basic attributes. In play Will and Perception are used like attributes, so I introduced them alongside the others. If you read the rules-as-written on shock, they define it as a temporary reduction in Dexterity and IQ, noting further that Will and Perception are affected by the IQ reduction and other Secondary Characteristics aren't.

Despite the names, the first aid rule called "treating shock" doesn't have anything to do with this "shock".

Any single injury whose HP is more than half your maxHP is a major wound.

When you receive a major wound, roll vs. Health to try to avoid knockdown – you drop anything you were holding and fall prone. If your Margin of Failure was 5 or more, you're unconscious; otherwise you're stunned. Your Active Defenses are at -4 while you're stunned (but being stunned doesn't impose any restrictions on which Active Defenses you can attempt.)

If you're stunned at the beginning of a turn you must choose Do Nothing as your maneuver, and roll vs. Health. On success, you're no longer stunned. (On failure, you simply remain stunned.)

Hard to Subdue comes into play for any roll vs. Health where the possible results of failure include unconsciousness or stunning, thus it applies to rolls against Knockdown. Naturally, modifiers from Fit or Unfit apply also.

The rules refer to knockdown and stunning as if they were inherently paired, which is a little misleading. Being stunned is one possible result of Knockdown, but not the only one; other things can cause stunning, though we haven't gotten to any of them yet. Also Knockdown should not be confused with knockback, which we'll discuss later.

A lot of behavioral disadvantages are governed by self-control numbers, like Bad Temper, Impulsiveness, or Post-Combat Shakes. When a situation comes up in which it might play a role, a player might simply role-play its effects – they chose to have that disadvantage, after all. But if they want to resist, the GM might call for a self-control roll (SCR). A Self-Control Number for a disadvantage might be 6, 9, 12, or 15. An SCR is a Success Roll, where the Base Skill is the Self-Control Number. Typically, there aren't bonuses for SCR's, but there might be penalties. If they roll at or under the target number, they didn't give in; above it and they failed and the player should role-play the consequences.

You'll recall from the probabilities chart that there are big differences among these numbers.

If you have a disadvantage with a self-control number of 15, it's a problem that rarely affects you except for extreme circumstances (when penalties apply). If you have it with a 6, you're rarely able to avoid it even under the best of circumstances. Notably, Will does not play a role. The Self-Control Number is a measure of the issue's severity for you, personally.

GMs usually award players Character Points at the conclusion of a session (or series of sessions) with which they can acquire new advantages or learn new skills or improve old skills. The rules-as-written call on GMs to penalize players in these awarded Character Points if they never voluntarily give in to their behavioral disadvantages (but also suggest that the GM may allow a player to spend unspent Character Points to buy off making some given SCR).

This is a common subject of house rules, with some GMs preferring a carrot to a stick and offering Character Points to a player for giving in to a disadvantage.

Characters may grow over time and some given disadvantage may become less of an issue for them. The GM might allow (or encourage) them to "buy off" the disadvantage, spending accumulated Character Points awards equal to the disadvantage's Character Points and eliminating it. Or it might be bought off in degrees, e.g. its Self-Control Number going from a 9 to a 12, and then to a 15, and eliminated altogether some time after that.

Some other disadvantages with Self-Control Numbers are Charitable, Cowardice, Curious, Greed, Indecisive, Miserliness, Overconfidence, Selfish, Selfless, Short Attention Span, and Squeamish.

A bunch of disadvantages represent some code or core belief a character has voluntarily chosen to live by in the context of the game setting, such as Code of Honor, Disciplines of Faith, Honesty, Intolerance, Sense of Duty, or Vow. Each of these comes in different levels with different point costs reflecting its impact on the character's life. Alone among these, Honesty is associated with a Self-Control Number; in general, the player is expected to commit to acting in keeping with the disadvantage. (Honesty refers to being law-abiding, thus is distinct from Truthfulness.)

A player with the Character Points to spend may buy off any of these disadvantages at any time they can to reflect the character having simply changed their mind.

Many RPG characters find themselves in violent situations. Real people often have difficulty acting or responding violently; this is reflected in the several variants of the Pacifism disadvantage.

Total Nonviolence is what it says on the tin: you would sooner die than fight. Self-Defense Only disallows pre-emptive strikes but allows fighting back to protect yourself or others. Cannot Harm Innocents is like a less restrictive version of Self-Defense that only forbids the use of deadly force on anyone who isn't trying to do you serious harm. Cannot Kill allows fighting, but not anything likely to cause someone's death. Reluctant Killer is the least restrictive: it penalizes Attack maneuvers and outright prevents taking Aim maneuvers.

Many civilians are likely to have Reluctant Killer. It could be a premise of some campaigns that the characters start with Reluctant Killer or Cannot Kill.

Obviously several of these are things normally considered virtues – in GURPS, disadvantage doesn't mean bad thing… it means a thing that complicates your life. Things that give you more options are advantages. Things that restrict your options are disadvantages.

Be clear that an advantage or disadvantage's presence on your character sheet should be considered a declaration that you want this to be a thing that comes up for your character during play. It's appropriate for a GM to call for an SCR if a golden opportunity for a relevant disadvantage comes up and a player isn't acting on it, or to remind players of when an action would violate a code of conduct. If you hate the idea of your character acting squeamish, avoid choosing Squeamish.

Tired yet? This brings us to our final secondary characteristic, fatigue points (FP). FP are analogous to HP in many ways, but they're based on your Health, not Strength – by default, your maximum FP is the same as your Health. Various things make you lose FP; I'll use maxFP to designate one's maximum FP as opposed to one's current FP.

Anyone who has made any attack or Active Defense in a combat lasting 11 turns or more loses 1 FP + their Encumbrance Level in FP. If you attacked or parried with a weapon for which you didn't have the minimum Strength, you lose 1 additional FP. For combat of 10 turns or fewer, you don't lose any FP, at 11 or more you do, whether that's 11 exactly or 100; there isn't greater loss for longer combat.

Not getting enough food or water or sleep also costs FP (disadvantages like Insomnia and Nightmares might contribute to lost sleep). As you might expect, various kinds of prolonged exertion or overexertion cost FP; we'll see some later.

Analogous with Reeling, once your current FP drop to below 1/3 of your maxFP, you're officially very tired. You halve your Dodge and Move (rounded up). You also halve your Strength (round up) for any Strength-based Success Rolls (or any Strength-based skill roll, if that comes up). This does not affect your HP or Damage or Basic Lift or give you a penalty on your attacks for being below your weapon's minimum Strength. This persists until your FP reach or exceed 1/3 your maxFP.

The Dodge and Move penalties are cumulative with any penalties for Reeling; if you're both, you'll be at 1/4 Dodge and Move.

Once you're down to 0 FP, you're on the verge of collapse. You lose 1 HP for each further FP you lose. And you have to make a Will roll to do anything besides talking or resting. In combat, that includes any time you choose any maneuver besides Do Nothing. A success lets you act normally; failure means you collapse and are incapacitated and unable to do anything until you recover to at least 1 FP. Critical failure on the Will roll means a roll vs. HT to avoid a heart attack. If you have a heart attack, your FP immediately drop to -maxFP, plus even more dire consequences; see B429 for details.

The rules don't comment on taking Active Defenses during the Reactive Phase following the Do Nothing maneuver. I would follow the example of the unconsciousness check from being at or below 0 HP. If you're at or below 0 FP and choose Do Nothing to avoid rolling vs. Will to stay conscious, you're safe for the subsequent Reactive Phase unless you need to mount an Active Defense. To do so, you would need to succeed at the Will roll you had postponed.

At -maxFP, you're unconscious. It's impossible for your FP to go any lower. (If you did have any further FP losses, which would probably take an exotic attack you wouldn't find in a mundane game, they would be deducted from your HP instead.)

For every 10 minutes of rest, you recover 1 FP. If you've collapsed or fallen unconscious from low FP, you recover FP at the usual rate.

For games that feature it, doing magic generally costs FP (resulting in highly fit wizards). Many supernatural abilities do, too; some supernatural attacks drain others' FP. Some campaigns skip keeping track of fatigue, but it's hard to avoid in settings where it's a key limiting factor on superpowered effects.

The Basic Set and Discworld offer a fairly heroic value for how far one can walk in a day: your Move x 10 miles. With a successful Hiking roll, +20%. A variant appears in GURPS High-Tech (as well as GURPS Low-Tech Companion 2: Weapons and Warriors, where it's labelled "Realistic Foot Travel"): your walking speed in miles per hour is half your Move (keeping any fraction). This may be increased by optimal terrain or penalized heavily by bad terrain (consult the rules). A single successful Hiking roll for the whole trip increases it by 20%. Each hour of walking costs 1 + your Encumbrance Level in FP (the same as being in combat for more than 10 seconds).

If you take a Move maneuver in combat and move forward by your full Move, then on your subsequent turn, you can sprint on your Move maneuver: your distance covered is 20% greater. For every 15 seconds of Sprinting, roll vs. Health or your Running skill; on a failure, you lose 1 FP. You can't Sprint during a Move and Attack maneuver (though you could begin sprinting in the turn after a Move and Attack maneuver during which you moved forward by your full Move).

This works the same outside of combat – take your full Move for one second and starting the next second, you can Sprint. You can only Sprint while moving forward; you have to drop to your Move for a second for a direction change before you could resume Sprinting. You can't sprint while crouching.

Paced running is at just half of your sprinting speed, but you only have to roll vs. Health or Running to see whether it cost you an FP once every hour.

Notice that the Running skill doesn't affect speed, it just lets you maintain speed longer by letting you lose fewer FP while doing it. A sprinter in GURPS terms would be characterized by high Basic Move; an ultra-marathoner would have high maxFP and Running skill (and at least good Basic Move). If a pursuer with Basic Move of 6 and no Running skill is chasing someone with a Basic Move of 5 and Running at 20, the pursuer is going to catch the person.

Attempting a surprise attack usually requires a Stealth roll. If the target is not expecting trouble and the Stealth roll succeeds, the defenders are taken by total surprise.

If you're taken by Total Surprise, you freeze – for 1d seconds, you must choose the Do Nothing maneuver. You can attempt Active Defenses with a -4 penalty. After the freeze, you continue to be mentally stunned. Being Mentally Stunned is analogous to being Physically Stunned (what we previously just called "stunned" – if it's not qualified, assume it's physical). You may attempt Active Defenses, but they're at -4. On your turn, you must choose Do Nothing. Instead of rolling vs. Health, roll vs. IQ. On a success, you're no longer mentally stunned.

Being frozen is distinct from and worse than being mentally stunned. Do Nothing lets you attempt to recover from being mentally stunned; the only recovery from freezing is waiting out the clock.

If you're both mentally and physically stunned, make a recovery roll for each during your Active Phase. The rules don't specify whether the -4 penalties should stack if you're both physically and mentally stunned; in the absence of a stated exception, we can conclude that they do and that by the rules-as-written, you're at -8.

Fright Checks are a staple of horror games, but can occur in mundane games too. If in a Quick Contest of someone's Intimidation vs. your Will they won the contest and had a critical success or you lost it and had a critical failure, you would roll a Fright Check. (This is a very rare example of specific defined effects for critical success or failure during a contest, but notice that it still didn't have to do with determining who won or lost.) The GM might call for a Fright Check in other extreme circumstances if you encounter unexpected violence or gore, or are exposed to tear gas, or are on fire.

A Fright Check is a Success Roll vs. Will. The extremity of what you encountered and other things about the situation provide modifiers, and there's a twist particular to fright checks: the Rule of 14 – a 14 or higher always fails. Your maximum essential skill for the roll is 13. Even under the best of circumstances, you will fail Fright Checks 16% of the time. If you succeed, you keep it together and can calmly choose how to react. If you fail, you note your Margin of Failure and roll 3d, adding the Margin of Failure to the result. You then look up the result on the Fright Check Table on B360, also available in Discworld or the GURPS GM Screen. Possible results include mental stunning, fainting, loss of FP, or acquiring a new Disadvantage.

The Fright Check table starts at 4 and its final entry is for any result of 40 or more. The lowest-value results are mildest and they get worse as you go. But remember the bell curve: even with the smallest of margins of failure, you're very unlikely to get one of the results at the start of the table.

GURPS Horror has more detailed rules for Fright Checks. DFRPG offers its own attractive alternative for the results of Fright Check failures. GURPS Lite has a simpler version of the results, without a table: you're mentally stunned for 2d + your Margin of Failure seconds or, if you critically failed, you faint for 1d + your Margin of Failure minutes.

The Disadvantages you're liable to acquire are a Delusion or a Phobia. A Delusion is straightforwardly a belief in something that isn't true. A Phobia has an associated Self-Control Number; when you encounter the focus of your phobia, either role-play your panicked or frightened response or the GM may call for a Self-Control Roll. GURPS Tactical Shooting suggests a number of other Disadvantages one could acquire from post-traumatic stress (i.e., a failed Fright Check) in lieu of a Delusion.

With the Rule of 15 perk, it's possible for you to have an essential skill of 14 on a Fright Check. This does you no good if your essential skill was 13 or under anyway.

The Fearlessness advantage comes in levels, and for every level of Fearlessness you have, you get +1 to Fright Checks or to resist Intimidation. (This does nothing to change 13 being the maximum Effective Skill for Fright Checks.) Fearfulness is its mirror opposite disadvantage.

There is a point to having a Will or Will modified by Fearlessness greater than 13, because any given Fright Check might be associated with a large penalty. Fearlessness and/or a high Will would give you a shot of still rolling against 13 even after that penalty.

The Unfazeable advantage means you're immune to Fright Checks, Intimidation, and most Reaction Modifiers. (A GM would be expected to not allow this advantage in a campaign in which Fright Checks were going to be a staple of the campaign.)

Combat Reflexes is an extraordinarily valuable advantage for combatants. Its laundry list of features:

• +1 to all Active Defenses
• +1 to Fast-Draw
• +2 to Fright Checks
• you never freeze
• +6 to recover from mental stunning
• +1 to initiative for your side; +2 if you're the leader

But we should explain what initiative means…

If you're trying to sneak up on someone who's wary and mindful there might be trouble, there's a Quick Contest of Stealth vs. Perception or Observation. If you win, the other side suffers partial surprise. Your side gets to act normally, but everyone on the losing side is mentally stunned. After their initial turn of being mentally stunned, they get a cumulative +1/turn on their recovery rolls – +1 for the next turn, +2 for the turn after that, etc. (Thus it isn't possible for this mental stunning to last more than 6 turns total.)

If hostile parties happen to stumble upon each other in mutual surprise, you determine initiative. This isn't determined individually, but for each side in a conflict. Each side rolls 1d, with these modifiers:

• -2 if their side has no leader
• +1 if anyone on their side does has Combat Reflexes or +2 if their leader has it
• +1 if the leader has a higher IQ than the other side's leader
• +1 if the leader has Tactics

That's either a +2 if the leader has Combat Reflexes or a +1 for anyone else whether it's one person with Combat Reflexes or 7. The Combat Reflexes bonuses aren't cumulative. If one side wins, they get to act normally while the other suffers Partial Surprise, as above. In a tie, no one suffers from surprise – both sides get to act normally.

The disadvantage that's a near-opposite of Combat Reflexes is Combat Paralysis. You have a -2 on all Fright Checks. And when you try to take action in response to physical danger, roll vs. Health with the equivalent of the Rule of 14 in effect – any roll of 14 or more fails. On failure, you're mentally stunned, except that you roll against Health to recover, not IQ. After the first turn of Combat Paralysis-induced mental stun, you get a cumulative +1/turn bonus (as if you had lost initiative during Partial Surprise). Subsequent to this, you wouldn't be paralyzed again by the same danger, but you're at risk the next time you're in danger.

The rules are explicit that this is mental stunning and that despite it being mental stunning, that the recovery is against Health and not IQ. If you were both physically and mentally stunned, you would be rolling vs. Health for recovery twice. If you were mentally stunned from combat paralysis could you also be mentally stunned from some other cause than Combat Paralysis and thus have to roll vs. Health to recover from mental stunning and roll vs. IQ? I don't know; perhaps it should be one recovery roll vs. Health or IQ, whichever is worse.

The Rule of 15 perk applies to Fright Checks and won't help you on your roll to avoid mental stunning from Combat Paralysis.

We already mentioned Boxing, the Dexterity/Average unarmed striking skill. Boxing applies to punches (possibly with brass knuckles), but not to using a fist load or a sap, or biting – for those, either choose Brawling or make an unskilled attack using Dexterity. You can't kick with Boxing, either – for that, choose Brawling or Karate or use Dexterity.

You can use Boxing to parry, but as with Brawling or unskilled unarmed parries, your parry is at -3 vs. weapons except for thrust melee attacks. Boxing also has a -2 penalty to Parry kicks. Against kicks, your unskilled Parry based on Dexterity is likely to match or exceed your Boxing Parry unless you're very good at Boxing.

If your Boxing skill is at DX+1, add +1 Basic Damage per die of thrust damage to your punches. At DX+2 or higher, add +2 per die.

As with Brawling and unskilled unarmed combat, if someone successfully Parries a Boxing punch with a weapon, they automatically get to make an attack roll with that weapon; if they succeed there's no defense roll and damage is rolled normally.

Karate is a Dexterity/Hard unarmed striking skill, covering punches and kicks. Like Boxing, the punches could be with brass knuckles, but not with fist loads or a sap. An advantage Karate has over Brawling and Boxing is that there is no penalty for parrying armed attacks. Karate also offers a Basic Damage bonus: if you have it at DX, add +1 Basic Damage per die of thrust damage to punches or kicks; if you have it at DX+1 or higher, add +2 Basic Damage per die.

As with other unarmed attacks, if someone makes a successful armed Parry against a Karate punch or kick, they make an attack roll for that weapon, but with Karate this attack roll by the defender is at -4.

Moreso than the other unarmed striking skills, successful Karate depends on freedom of motion. With Karate, both Attacks and Parries are penalized by your Encumbrance Level.

Since Brawling is Easy, Boxing is Average, and Karate is Hard, in all three cases the bonus damage rules are saying that if you've spent at least 4 Character Points on it (if you have the skill at 2 levels up from the beginning level), you get +1 damage per die on all attacks the skill covers. And for Boxing and Karate, if you've spent at least 8 Character Points on it (thus have it at 3 or more levels up from the beginning level), you get +2 per die. (Brawling's damage bonus doesn't go beyond +1 per die.)

If you have more than one of these skills, you always choose one for a given attack. You can't stack the damage bonuses from Boxing and Karate if you have both – you're either rolling against your Boxing skill and get the benefits of Boxing, or you're rolling against Karate and you get its benefits. But attacking with one doesn't mean you can't parry with the other during the subsequent Reactive Phase.

So even if you have Karate, you can still choose to, say, kick using unskilled unarmed combat with Dexterity at the usual -2 penalty to kick (this would give you a better attack roll if you had Karate at less than Dexterity +0). But if you succeeded, you wouldn't get Karate's damage bonus. If someone with a weapon successfully parried your kick, they'd attack with their full skill, not with the -4 penalty they'd have had if you'd attacked with Karate. Again, you're either striking with Karate with all of its consequences, or you're not.

Like Brawling, neither Boxing nor Karate offer a default to an attribute.

Similar to how the Shortsword skill covers things that aren't shortswords, the Karate skill doesn't refer specifically to karate, the Japanese martial art. It refers to some sort of technical training in kicks and strikes. Likewise, someone with the Boxing skill has training in punching, but may have never seen a boxing ring.

Karate may seem somewhat expensive for what it does for you compared to Brawling or Boxing. It'll get more interesting when we eventually get to Combat Techniques.

As before, a successful attack roll just means that an attack might be successful and the target can still defend (unless the shooter rolled a Critical Success).

We've already alluded to the fact that you can Dodge gunfire. Of course you're not actually dodging bullets – you're paying attention to the shooters and trying to be where they're not pointing. And you can do this with no penalty against any number of attackers in a turn. There's a 'Restricted Dodge Against Firearms' rule in GURPS Martial Arts (or GURPS Tactical Shooting) that limits this to at most one shooter per turn, along with further restrictions (for details, consult one of the above). Kromm has noted that if they were doing it over, this should have been the norm and the existing rules as written should have been considered a cinematic option.

If an attacker with a ranged weapon is close enough, you can Parry. This means redirecting their weapon or arm, not parrying bullets. (It's possible to parry any ranged weapon, not just guns.)

As noted previously, you cannot Block firearms and you don't get to add a shield or cloak's DB to any Active Defense against firearms.

Now we'll consider both a revolver and a semi-automatic pistol and we'll add three more columns to our firearms table. Shots has the gun's capacity. The 8+1 notation for the 9mm indicates that the magazine holds 8, but there can be an additional round in the chamber. RoF is the Rate of Fire, the number of shots you can take during a single Attack. And Recoil is the amount of kick the gun has; when you're taking advantage of a Rate of Fire of more than one to shoot multiple rounds, Recoil plays a role in determining how many of those hit.

The stats above assume that rifles are being used while standing and pistols are being used one-handed. If a rifle is being used prone with the barrel propped on a bipod (or otherwise on something stable) it is braced. The relevant minimum Strength is 2/3 what's listed (round up), and you get a +1 bonus to accuracy. A pistol is Braced if it's being used two-handed.

For a rifle (or any gun that normally requires two hands) to count as Braced, you can't take any movement during your Active Phase, even if your maneuver would normally allow it. This restriction doesn't apply to a pistol being used two-handed.

The rifle above does 5d of Basic Damage. That makes for an average of 17.5. The absolute minimum is 5, of course, but there's a better than 98% chance of at least 10 HP. Say the target started out uninjured but had no armor and had Health and maxHP of 10, and that it was a 10 HP injury. That drops the character to 0 HP, and they'd need to immediately make an unconsciousness check. Let's say they succeeded. It was also a Major Wound so they need another Health roll to avoid Knockdown, where failure means not just Knockdown but either Stunning (and thus -4 to Active Defenses) or unconsciousness (if the Margin of Failure on the Knockdown roll was 5 or more).

If they're still conscious and standing, they have to make another unconsciousness check at the start of their turn. After the two unconsciousness checks and the Knockdown check, there's only a 12.5% chance they're still standing, and their reward is the chance to act with -4 in Shock, thus -4 to all skill and attribute rolls against IQ, Dexterity, Will, or Perception (unless they had High Pain Threshold).

There's about a 30% chance the injury would have been 20 HP or more, which means a death check and that the unconsciousness checks would be at -1. The death check itself, alone, has a 50% chance of killing them. Considering all of the death check, the Knockdown check, the penalized unconsciousness check, and the other penalized unconsciousness check at the beginning of their turn, there's only a 3.5% chance they're still standing and able to act on their turn.

And 5d is a middling amount of damage for a rifle.

GURPS is still (deliberately) somewhat lax on how dangerous gunshots are. But make no mistake: they're still very dangerous, and just one gunshot could wreck your character's whole day. (At least by the mundane assumptions we're hewing to. Among options in the GURPS Basic Set itself, and especially in GURPS Gun Fu and the GURPS Action series, you could also run a game with heroes still going strong despite John Woo movie quantities of bullets flying.)

The Basic Set says "unbalanced" in regard to weapons in three different contexts. One of these ways we've already seen – balanced one-handed clubs or blades bigger than a knife use Shortsword or Broadsword skills as opposed to the unbalanced one-handed weapons that use Axe/Mace.

The others are parry-U weapons and weapons that can become unready after use.

Some heavy weapons like a full-sized axe (as opposed to the hatchet or throwing axe we've seen before) are unwieldy and so can't be used to parry if you used them to attack during the previous Active Phase. These are marked with a 'U' in the Parry column in the weapons table.

For most weapons, your stance and how you hold the weapon don't change that much between using them to attack or parry. Parry-U applies when the difference is large. You could attack with them every turn with no Parrying in-between, or if you didn't attack with them on your previous turn, you could parry with them (multiple times, even) during your Reactive Phase.

If you take nothing but All-out Attacks, this limitation doesn't affect you, since you weren't going to be attempting Active Defenses anyway. Likewise if you take nothing but All-out Defenses.

No amount of Strength on the wielder's part lets them mitigate this limitation. (Martial Arts' Defensive Attack maneuver does mitigate it – consult Martial Arts for details.)

What if you make an unarmed strike against someone who successfully parries with a Parry-U weapon and thus should get an automatic attack against you, but their weapon is by definition incapable of attacking? I would say they don't get the automatic attack, but I haven't seen a ruling on the subject.

"Parry-U" per se isn't mentioned in the rules, but it's a term sometimes used in the forums.

Going from one-handed to two-handed usage of a weapon or vice versa requires a Ready maneuver to change your grip. Switching between using it with different skills without changing the number of hands you're using does not – you just say at the start of your turn which skill you're using. With a two-handed grip on a spear, you could use it with the Spear skill one turn and Staff skill the next as you pleased. If you wanted to throw it, you would need a Ready maneuver to prepare to make one-handed use of it with the Thrown Weapon (Spear) skill. You could use a quarterstaff two-handed with Staff or Two-Handed Sword, but would need a Ready maneuver to use it with Broadsword.

The Grip Mastery perk allows switching grip as a free action either before or after your maneuver (you can't do both during the same Active Phase). You must specialize by some given weapon, e.g. Grip Mastery (Spear), but you could take it more than once.

The decision you make during your Active Phase about the skill you're using persists through the subsequent Reactive Phase – any Parries you make with that weapon are based on that skill. You can't attack with Spear to take advantage of the double damage from impaling's Wounding Modifier and say during the subsequent Reactive Phase that you're Parrying with Staff to take advantage of its +2 Parry bonus. Unless you have the Form Mastery (Spear) perk, that is. Form mastery requires specializing by some given weapon and allows you to freely change what skill you're using the weapon with during a turn so long as they involve the same number of hands. If they involve a different number of hands, see Grip Mastery, above.

These form and grip issues do not apply to unarmed skills. You can punch with Boxing during your Active Phase and parry with Karate during the Reactive Phase.

Unready isn't a characteristic of a class of weapons. It's a state a specific weapon might be in and means simply that it isn't Ready as would be required to use it with any Attack maneuver or the Parry Active Defense. A single-dagger or double-dagger weapon you've swung without enough Strength to avoid its going unready is like a sheathed weapon on your belt – you'll need a Ready maneuver before you can use it (but Fast-Draw isn't going to help you here).

If you're wielding a weapon that goes unready after use (i.e., you don't have enough Strength to prevent that) and you fall down or are stunned, it becomes unready. And naturally, you couldn't use that weapon for both attacks of an All-out Attack: Double.

A Parry-U weapon that you've attacked with is not unready, but it is ineligible for use with a Parry in the following Reactive Phase. Or if you have Parried with it in a given Reactive Phase, it's ineligible for use with an Attack on your subsequent turn. But if you attack with it one turn and on your next turn you take a Move maneuver during your Active Phase, you could Parry with it in the following Reactive Phase. Or if you Parry in one Reactive Phase and choose All-Out Defense: Dodge on your next turn (and don't attempt any parries), you can attack with it on the turn after that. No Ready maneuvers required.

A weapon being Parry-U doesn't imply that it's also single-dagger or double-dagger; a weapon being single-dagger doesn't imply that it's Parry-U; a weapon being double-dagger is probably also Parry-U, but might be incapable of parrying. Since "unbalanced" is ambiguous, it's probably best to say Parry-U or Single-Dagger or Double-Dagger when those are the qualities you're talking about.

Other Karate techniques in the Basic Set are Back Kick, Jump Kick, and Lethal Strike. Martial Arts has many more, and explicitly labels Lethal Strike a cinematic technique, which the Basic Set doesn't. We won't go into these; consult the rules.

Many Attack Options apply only to melee attacks or only to ranged attacks – we'll first consider a couple of melee attack options.

Injuries to an eye, arm, leg, hand, or foot may be crippling. For an arm or a leg, it's any single injury that's more than your maxHP/2 (i.e., the same as your major wound threshold), for a hand or a foot it's more than maxHP/3, and for the eye it's more than maxHP/10. So for someone with maxHP of 11, that means 6 for arm or leg, 4 for hand or foot, and just 2 for an eye. Any crippling wound counts as a Major Wound also, so you would have to roll vs. Health to avoid Knockdown, with the usual consequences for failure – unconsciousness if your Margin of Failure was 5 or more, and physical stunning otherwise.

Any single injury that does double that HP in damage to that location permanently destroys that part, possibly completely severing it or irrevocably mangling it.

The silver lining is that for limbs and extremities, the minimum HP to cripple a location also imposes a maximum on the HP in damage you can take to a location from a single injury, except that there's no maximum for an eye.

It's important to understand that in GURPS, HP is an abstraction representing overall degree of bodily injury. Individual body parts do not have their own HP and you don't need to track where individual injuries occurred or how many HP of damage they were. Crippling injuries don't change this.

The person above with maxHP of 11 would have their leg destroyed by a single injury doing 12 HP of damage to it, but they would only lose 6 HP with the destruction of their leg as a side-effect. Any single injury doing 6 HP of damage to the leg would cripple it. But they could take three 5 HP injuries to the same leg and they'd be down 15 HP but not crippled. (An optional rule for accumulated wounds on B420 does make cumulative injuries to the same location contribute to crippling.)

If you cripple an arm or hand, the person drops anything they were holding. If you cripple a leg or foot, they fall down.

If you've received a crippling injury, when combat is over, you roll vs. Health to determine its duration. On success, it's temporary and its effects will last only until you've recovered to your maxHP. On failure, it's lasting and with competent medical care the effects will persist for 1d-3 months, with a minimum of 1 month (without medical care, it's 1d months). On a critical failure, the crippling is permanent and that body part is unusable.

Because all Wounding Modifiers become x4 with an eye, even 1 HP of Basic Damage would destroy a mundane human's eye – you'd need to have a maxHP of 41 before that ceased to be the case.

If you attempt an unarmed strike and your opponent successfully parries with a weapon, when they make their automatic attack roll with that weapon (at -4 if the strike was with karate), if they hit, the hit location is the arm you tried to strike with.

If someone attacks you with a weapon and you attempt an unarmed parry and fail, the attacker gets their choice of striking their original targeted (or rolled) location or the arm you tried your parry with.

For the specific locations below, where a value isn't specified, the default applies. Cutting is x1.5 for a leg, like normal; impaling is x2 for the neck, etc.

If we revisit our 5d rifle damage example from above, where there's a more than 98% chance of 10 HP Basic Damage, and about a 30% chance of 20 HP or more, let's look at how that plays out if it hits different locations. The damage type is pi (Piercing).

Notice that the skull's DR of 2 reduces the Penetrating Damage before the x4 Wounding Modifier.

For most people 10 HP to a limb will be a crippling injury and 20 HP would mean the limb's destruction. 10 HP to a hand or a foot is enough to destroy the extremity for most people or merely cripple it for those with very high maxHP. Crippling or destroying a limb or extremity does put a ceiling on how many HP will be lost, but also means a major wound and thus a Knockdown roll. And even if you make all your rolls, crippling a foot or leg means falling down.

A 60 HP injury is guaranteed instant death for someone with an average maxHP of 10. 80 HP is instant death for someone with a fairly high maxHP of 16. If your maxHP and current HP are 15, then the 30 HP Injury from 10 HP of Penetrating Damage to the vitals would drop your HP to -15, resulting in a death check, a Knockdown check, an immediate unconsciousness check at -1, and another unconsciousness check at -1 at the start of your next turn before you could act. It's very likely you'd be out of the fight.

It's possible to do less injury with a hit location if you hit the skull with less than 3 HP of Basic Damage or if you hit a limb with a large piercing, huge piercing, or impaling attack, using hit locations and crippling/destruction rules makes combat much more dangerous.

GURPS Martial Arts has rules for hit locations that go into much more detail, as well as details on how attackers' and defenders' postures interact with hit locations. GURPS Low-Tech and the PDFs in the GURPS Low-Tech series have much more detail on how different kinds of armor protect different locations. The GURPS Grand Unified Hit Location Table is based on content from all of the above and more (and thus goes into much more detail than we've covered).

Feint is another way, besides Deceptive Attack, to try to use your Attack skill to lower your opponent's Defense roll. During your Active Phase, you fake a melee attack against a specific opponent who must be able to see you and whom you must be able to attack. A Feint is a Resisted Contest. You can use the best combat skill you could attack with in the moment. If one hand holds a ready weapon and the other is open, you can choose among your skill with the weapon or your best unarmed skill, or Dexterity if you don't have one). They can use the best combat skill they could possibly defend with – the best among any weapon or unarmed skill they could possibly Parry with or their Shield or Cloak skills if they have one of those ready and could possibly Block, or Dexterity if nothing else. Note that they directly use their skill (or Dexterity) itself, not an Active Defense score.

Because it's a Resisted Contest, if you fail, the Feint failed. If you succeed, your opponent makes their roll. If you win the contest, then your opponent gets a defense penalty equal to your Margin of Victory if you attack them on your next turn. If you make an All-out Attack (Double), this penalty applies to their defense against both attacks. If your opponent happens to bravely turn tail and flee and in your next turn you're attacking their back, you still get your bonus from the Feint. If circumstances prevent your making your attack against them on your very next turn, the chance is lost – the potential gain from a Feint is highly ephemeral.

You can Feint with one skill and use its benefit on attacks with a different skill, e.g., Feint with a punch, but then attack with a knife.

Even if an attack with a given weapon would normally leave it unready, a Feint maneuver does not.

To the other characters, a Feint is indistinguishable from an attack that missed. The character doesn't know that it was a feint and that they may have, say, -5 to their defense next turn. The player or GM is obliged to not have the character respond as if they do know that. But if a Feint attempt fails, it's obvious that it was an attempt at a Feint. GMs are even encouraged to keep an NPC's Feint secret, rolling on their turn and saying it was a failed attack, and only on their next turn revealing that that had really been a Feint and resolving the resisted contest for the Feint immediately before the attack it might apply to.

Feint allows taking a Step and allows Active Defenses normally… just like an Attack maneuver.

Feint is also the name of a Technique whose prerequisite skill is any specific melee combat skill. Its default is +0, but can go up to +4. So if you had Karate at 12 and Feint (Karate) at +2, you could feint with Karate at 14. GURPS Martial Arts suggests that a GM might allow resisting feints with one's best Feinting technique or melee combat skill or blocking skill independent of whether you had the corresponding weapon or shield in the moment.

Evaluate is the melee equivalent of aiming. You specify one opponent who's in sight and whom you could have possibly attacked this turn (even if it took a Move and Attack to do it). You spend that turn studying them and trying to figure out how they're going to move. It doesn't require a roll. One turn of Evaluation gives a +1 to a Feint, Attack, any All-out Attack, or Move and Attack you make against that opponent on your subsequent turn. You can continue to make Evaluate maneuvers, with a cumulative +1 per turn, to a maximum of +3. That's the maximum benefit, but you could take as many more turns as you like to maintain it at +3.

You may take a step and make Active Defenses normally without interfering with your Evaluation.

If at the start of your turn, your previous maneuver was Evaluate, if you do anything other than attack your opponent or continue to evaluate them, the bonus is lost. The rules don't specify other conditions for losing the bonus, but certainly a GM might rule that being stunned or experiencing Knockdown would do it.

A Telegraphic Attack can't be used with bonuses from previous Evaluate or Feint maneuvers. Being unsubtle means abandoning previous subtlety.

Different melee weapons (or unarmed attacks) have different reaches. Close range is close enough to touch. A punch is close range. Other than Close, range is expressed as a number of yards. An axe has reach 1 – you can use it against opponents about 1 yard away. Some weapons have different reaches when they're used in different ways. A Thrust attack with a quarterstaff being used with Two-Handed Sword has reach 2, but a swinging attack works at reach 1 or 2.

We need to add reach to our tables, separated for thrust and swinging. Most weapons can be used at any of their reaches at any time, but a few (like a spear or a great axe) are awkward enough that it takes a Ready maneuver to switch reaches. Their reaches are marked with asterisks. The Reach Mastery perk lets you do it without one. Much like the Grip Mastery perk, Reach Mastery is specialized on a per weapon basis and lets you change reach as a free action once during your Active Phase, either before or after your maneuver.

We're also added a Weight column (in pounds). This is useful to know for encumbrance. We said earlier that "against small thrown weapons like knives, there's a -2 penalty to Parry". The actual rule is that the -2 penalty applies to thrown weapons of 1 lb. or less.

Knowing weapon weight will come in handy for some other purposes later.

As you can see, all natural weapons work at close range, with kicks also working at 1. Things used with the Knife skill all work at close range; most one-handed weapons work at reach 1 (exceptions being thrusting with a small knife or stiletto, which only work at close range). Most of the two-handed weapons we've seen work at either 1 or 2. Some really big pole-arms only work at reach 2 or more, but we won't be looking at them.

You can only attack someone if their distance from you corresponds to your attack's reach. They can't be too far away or too close. If your opponent has a weapon that only has reach 1 and yours has reach 2, you can attack from 2 yards away and use your step to move back. They can't use an Attack maneuver to attack you – they could take their step toward you at the start of the maneuver and you'd still be out of range of their weapon. They could close the distance with an All-out Attack, but afterwards they're defenseless and in range (if your weapon also works at reach 1) and your weapon, being larger, probably does more damage.

And you can only Parry at the same reach at which you could attack with the same weapon… or natural weapon, which means that you can only attempt an unarmed Parry if you're close. This has far-reaching implications.

Reach 1 weapons can hit opponents at 1 yard away; weapons or attacks with Close reach can hit opponents at, well, 0 yards away. If two combatants are close enough to attempt Close Reach attacks on each other, they're in close combat whether or not they're actively fighting each other in the moment.

So to punch someone (or, say, thrust with a small knife), you need to be in Close Combat. If you weren't already there at the start of your turn, you would need a maneuver with sufficient movement to get there. An attacker stepping into Close Combat and making their attack functionally happens at the same time, so a defender can attempt to Parry the attack with a Reach 1 weapon. Whether or not the attack or defense succeeded, the attacker made the movement and they're left in Close Combat.

Besides being at Reach C, there are several distinctions to Close Combat. You can make unarmed parries normally, but you can only attempt armed parries with weapons with Reach C attacks (most of which have -1 to Parry). Ranged weapons are at a penalty to attack equal to their bulk. If you begin your turn in Close Combat and you're wearing a shield, any Dexterity-based rolls (including all attacks) take the shield's Defense Bonus as a penalty, but if you're wearing a shield and start your turn out of Close Combat and enter Close Combat and attack that Active Phase, the penalty doesn't apply to that attack.

Using a Ready maneuver to ready a weapon isn't certain – it takes a successful Dexterity roll. On failure, your Active Phase was wasted – your weapon isn't ready. If you want to Fast-Draw, you have to make the Dexterity roll first. Failure still means a wasted Active Phase; success allows making a second roll to attempt the Fast-Draw. If that succeeds, your weapon is ready and can be used immediately in a maneuver this Active Phase; on failure, you must take a Ready maneuver, like usual with a failed Fast-Draw. Readying your weapon consumed your Active Phase but at least it's available for Parrying during your Reactive Phase and for attacking on your subsequent turn.

If you're in Close Combat at the start of your turn and want to attack with a Reach 1 weapon, you can select an Attack maneuver and use your step to step backwards. (You couldn't do this with an All-out Attack, since those only permit movement forward.)

Reach and Close Combat are principally featured in the Basic Set's Tactical Combat chapter, about using a hex map. When you use a hex map, the scale is 1 yard to a hex; being in Close Combat means being in the same hex as an opponent. As with exact facing and the differences between moving 1 yard vs. 2, some of this would be easier to track with a map, but the concepts are still meaningful without one.

From a Crawling posture, you can make only Reach C attacks.

That you can use a Reach 1 weapon to parry a Close Combat attack made as your opponent enters Close Combat is from Martial Arts (p. 117) and isn't specified in the Basic Set (or DFRPG or Discworld).

We've been silently assuming all attacks are against opponents in front of you. If you were using a hex map, that'd be formally defined as the 120-degree arc in front of you; without one, well, shoot for something similar to that.

An attack on someone to your side or behind you is a wild swing. Your maximum Effective Skill for the attack is 9 (like Move and Attack) and you're at a -5 penalty (1 worse than Move and Attack's -4 penalty). "Wild swing" doesn't mean it can't be a thrusting attack, but if it is a thrusting attack, the range can't be beyond 1 yard.

You can combine it with a Move and Attack (in which case it's at a -5 penalty – the penalties don't stack). You can't use it with All-out Attack: Determined, but you could use it with the other All-out Attacks.

You can't target a particular Hit Location with a Wild Swing; if Hit Locations are being used, roll for a random Hit Location. I wouldn't think a Wild Swing should be compatible with Deceptive Attack but it's probably reasonable to allow it with Telegraphic Attack (but I haven't seen a ruling on either.)

An elbow strike is a technique that defaults to Brawling -2 or Karate -2 to attack someone behind you. There's no further penalty for their being behind you – that's built into the -2. You can even target a Hit Location, but doing so incurs a further -1 penalty beyond the Hit Location penalty. If you hit, it does normal punching damage.

I told you Brawling had benefits we hadn't mentioned – it even has a couple more tricks to go.

Elbow Strike can't be improved beyond the prerequisite skill.

The rules as written disallow an unskilled fighter from even attempting an Elbow Strike, but Kromm has noted that optionally one could rule that an unskilled fighter defaults to DX-4 to attempt select techniques allowed by Brawling.

If you're grappled or being grappled, you can't move unless your Strength is twice or more your opponent's. If it is, your opponent's weight becomes encumbrance for you if you move. (We'll see guidelines later for determining a character's weight.) The rules don't go into detail, but I assume this means that if you move during the Active Phase of your turn, you would not only be subject to the Move penalty during your Active Phase, but continue to suffer the encumbrance penalties to Dodge, Judo, or Karate during the Reactive Phase.

If someone's grappled, they're at -4 to Dexterity, -2 to Parry, and -1 to Dodge. It's as if Parry were being calculated from skills based on Dexterity at -4 and Dodge were based on a Basic Speed based on Dexterity at -4, i.e., this is the exceptional case of a Dexterity penalty affecting Active Defenses that you've been on tenterhooks about since I mentioned it. (They're in Close Combat, so they can't Block at all.)

And a grappled person's options are dramatically circumscribed. They can't use the part that's grappled. If you've grappled a leg, they can't kick with it; if you've grappled an arm or hand, they can't attack or parry with that arm. They can't attempt ranged attacks. They can't take Aim, Feint, Concentrate, or Wait maneuvers. Move, Move and Attack or taking a step is subject to the double-or-more Strength requirement noted above. They can't Retreat at all, even if they do have double-or-more Strength.

Subject to the requirements that they can't attack with a grappled limb, they can use an Attack or All-Out Attack maneuver to attempt any attack available. Since they're in Close Combat, they can only make Reach C attacks. As noted in the Close Combat section, a Ready maneuver requires a Dexterity roll.

While you're grappling, you can't take Aim, Feint, Concentrate, or Wait maneuvers, or use ranged weapons. You can take Move or Move and Attack per the limitations mentioned above regarding your opponent's weight counting as encumbrance. But if you're grappling someone, there are other options for what you can do with an attack.

The proscribed maneuvers for someone who's grappled do not include Change Posture – by the rules, a grappled person's ability to change posture via the maneuver or instead of a step isn't limited. This means that if you succeed in a takedown, your opponent can stalemate an attempt to pin them by choosing a Change Posture maneuver and switching from lying to kneeling. This makes pinning someone unlikely unless they've suffered Knockdown, thus are starting out lying, and are stunned, thus forced to Do Nothing and unable to Change Posture.

GURPS Martial Arts: Technical Grappling offers a replacement for GURPS' regular grappling rules; in it, posture changes when grappling or being grappled are contested.

For the grappling options involving a contest of Strength, you can choose All-out Attack: Strong and apply its damage bonus (+2 or +1/die) to your roll. For those involving a contest of skill, you can choose All-out Attack: Determined and apply its +4 bonus to your roll. You couldn't apply Determined's +4 bonus to a Strength contest.

If you're grappled and you take an All-out Attack maneuver during your Active Phase, any takedown or pin attempts against you during your Reactive Phase succeed automatically. You could still roll your part of the Quick Contest to resist strangling.

Grabbing a Weapon is much like a special case of grappling a hand. You make a grappling attempt using a grappling skill or Dexterity, with a -4 penalty (i.e., the normal penalty for targeting a hand, thus twice the penalty to grapple a hand.) On success, you've grabbed the weapon – but your opponent still has their grip on it. While the weapon is grabbed, your opponent can't attack or parry with it, but their Active Defenses are not otherwise affected.

During their Active Phase, your opponent can simply relinquish the weapon to you as a free action. Otherwise, they can try to break free, as with grappling. If they win, they've broken free (and may immediately take a step). If they lose, you still have the weapon grabbed, but so do they.

On your next turn, you can try to wrest the weapon away with an Attack or All-out Attack: Strong maneuver (the rules are explicit that the attempt requires a full-turn maneuver and thus couldn't be one part of an All-out Attack: Double). You and your opponent roll one round of a Regular Contest of Strength. If you win, you have the weapon, otherwise, the stalemate continues. Unlike with an attempt to break free, the rules don't mention getting a bonus for using two hands.

As with Breaking Free from a body part being grappled, if you have Sumo Wrestling or Wrestling at DX+1, you get +1 to break free or to resist someone's attempt to break free; if you have either at DX+2 or higher, you get +2. I assume these bonuses also apply to attempts to wrest the weapon away or to resist attempts to wrest the weapon away, but the rules aren't explicit.

Knee Strike is a Technique – it's a Reach C attack that defaults to Brawling -1 or Karate -1 (and can be improved, but only to +0). If you're grappling from the front, you may attempt to target your opponent's groin without the usual -3 Hit Location penalty.

The Basic Set, Discworld, and Martial Arts specify that if you attempt a Knee Strike on someone you're grappling, they're at -2 to defend (DFRPG doesn't include it). I think this is an incomplete statement of the usual -2 to Parry and -1 to Dodge penalties for being grappled and probably shouldn't stack with them, but I've been unable to find an explicit ruling.

As with Elbow Strike, Kromm has suggested that one might allow an unskilled fighter to attempt this at DX-5, (i.e., the regular -1 Knee Strike penalty on top of DX-4.)

If you're grappling and fall unconscious, the grapple is released, of course. So when you're grappled, simply attacking the grappler can be an effective choice, so long as you have a viable Close Combat attack available.

If two people were struggling over a grabbed weapon and one falls unconscious, the other gets the weapon.

If you're grappling or being grappled and you're stunned, you don't let go but are at -4 in any grappling contests.

As noted above, the Wait maneuver doesn't offer movement or any attacks itself, though the defined maneuver to be taken if and when the Wait's trigger occurs might offer movement or an attack.

All-out Attack is the maneuver; Determined, Double, or Strong are associated options. Likewise All-out Defense with Increased Block, Increased Dodge, Increased Parry, and Double. And Move and Attack is one maneuver with some different rules for the ranged and melee cases.

All of the above are associated with a measure of the utility of that individual or organization and their Frequency of Appearance – how often they'll help or hinder you.

If the Patron's an organization, Power is a measure of the organization's reach and resources; for an Ally or Patron who's statted out in full like a PC, it corresponds to the Character Points they're built with. For Dependents, it's called Competence – the more Competent they are, the less they need you.

At the start of an adventure, the GM rolls based on Frequency of Appearance to see if a given Ally, Dependent, Enemy, or Patron will play a role in that adventure. If the roll succeeds, the Ally is available, the Dependent needs something, or the Enemy will do something nasty. For a Patron, success may mean that they'll be involved from the start, or it may pre-determine the result if you call on them for help during the adventure.

Allies and Contacts are usually agreeable, but they have their own fictitious lives. They may disagree with you; they may not be available. You can't simply dictate their behavior.

But if your character does control an organization, your subordinates would be represented by an Ally Group.

Besides Power and Frequency of Appearance, an Enemy is defined by Intent. A rival who wants to dig up dirt hoping to make you look bad is different from someone who wants you dead. Remember the general principle cited above regarding disadvantages: if it's on your sheet, that's a declaration that they're supposed to complicate your life.

A Patron's an advantage, but a powerful Patron will often be accompanied by a significant Duty disadvantage, or you might end up sharing your Patron's Enemies.

A contact is someone friendly to you whom you can ask for information or small favors, but you couldn't expect them to accompany you on a dangerous mission like an Ally.

A contact normally isn't statted in full. They may simply have one Essential Skill value defined – we don't care what exact advantages or attribute scores or skill levels might go into the Essential Skill, the result is all we need. A more versatile contact may have several Essential Skills defined.

In addition to these defined skills and Frequency of Appearance, Contacts have Reliability that determines how honest they'll be in case of failure, and other details of how they'll respond.

Contacts' Frequencies of Appearance are rolled for when you try to call on them for help to see if they're available.

GURPS pulls no punches: having kids is a Disadvantage. So is any other kind of Dependent. Besides Competence and Frequency of Appearance, Dependents have Importance – your degree of obligation to them. The same individual could be both Dependent and Ally; depending on how competent they are, the relationship might cross over into being a net advantage.

If the party is isolated, it may make no sense for an NPC to appear, regardless of the results of the roll.

GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 15: Henchmen suggests an alternative to Frequency of Appearance for Allies, in which it represents loyalty, instead. They're always available, but for any given thing you ask of them, the GM rolls for how willing they are to do it.

GURPS has a nominal default setting: chapter 20 of the Basic Set vol. 2: Campaigns is Infinite Worlds, describing competing time-travelling parallel-universe-jumping factions (expanded to book length in GURPS Infinite Worlds). One of GURPS' strengths for such a setting is the pervasive fundamental concept of Tech Level (TL). Characters have a personal Tech Level, typically that of their culture of origin. Without universe-jumping or time travel, in a setting in which the characters and everyone they encounter have the same Tech Level, you chiefly won't be thinking about it, but it still comes up in a couple of places, one of which is spending power, as we'll see shortly.

There are further levels defined for futuristic play. In our modern world, we're at TL 8, but we're at the exciting cusp of a new age. GURPS Low-Tech details TL 0-4 ; High-Tech covers TL 5-8 ; Ultra-Tech covers tech levels beyond that.

We introduce Tech Level now to discuss its role in the meaning of wealth. It has more interesting ramifications that we won't go into now.

One detail of GURPS that may seem peculiar at first is that it uses a standard unit of money that's called a dollar that at least roughly corresponds to the buying power of one US dollar in 2004 when the 4th Edition was published, and it uses it for all settings and times. It remains a constant – when current GURPS publications say $1, they mean the same unit that the Basic Set did in 2004. It's an abstraction that represents different things in different campaigns. GURPS Discworld defines a correspondence of one Ankh-Morporkian dollar = 20 GURPS dollars. For a game set in the US in 2018, a GM might say that one GURPS dollar = USD $1.33.

Wealth is an advantage/disadvantage with levels. The default Wealth of Average is the one that facilitates maintaining (wait for it) an average lifestyle in your culture, whatever that may be. In particular, these are the default incomes and amounts of Starting Wealth for someone with Wealth 0 at different Tech Levels.

The other Wealth advantages and disadvantages are defined relative to this. The Comfortable and Wealthy advantages mean you have twice or five times the income and starting wealth of an Average person, respectively; Struggling or Poor mean you have 1/2 or 1/5, respectively. There are more gradations in both directions; consult the rules for details.

GURPS equipment lists typically list a cost for the item, as well as the TL at which it's available. A small backpack that can carry 40 lbs. of gear is available starting at TL 1 and costs $60. For an average Bronze Age person, that would represent nearly an eighth of their Starting Wealth; for an average modern TL 8 person, .3%. And, of course, any number of items are going to be just plain better at higher Tech Levels. The price reflects an average item of that sort for its TL.

This abstraction works fairly well, but inevitably it'll produce some strange results for some items in some settings – it's expected that the GM will modify things as needed.

Status is a measure of your place in society. It ranges from -2 to 8, with 0 as the default. +4 would be a substantially reknowned person; +7 would be among the most elevated – a monarch or a pope.

Relative status can provide modifiers to reaction rolls, depending on context. If you're within your culture and your status is higher, the difference between your status and an NPC's is a modifier to a reaction roll by the NPC. If you have +3 Status and they have -1, the roll gets +4. If your status is negative, then those of higher status usually react negatively to you and the difference between your status and theirs is a penalty to any reaction rolls. If your status is at least 0, then lower status doesn't provide a penalty in a friendly context – if you've made an appointment with someone and are meeting them on their terms, you won't have a penalty. In an unfriendly context, the difference between your status and theirs becomes a penalty to the reaction roll (i.e., it's the same result as the normal case for having negative status).

Of course, there are also contexts in which having a higher Status than everyone around you might result in negative reactions.

Elevated status might mean a noble title, but could also mean celebrity in the modern world. You can have high Wealth without high Status or vice versa (details will vary with the setting) but maintaining your status bears a cost, given below up to Status 4.

It's not a sure thing that either party is aware of the other's status, of course; they're responding to their perception. If you're not maintaining your Status, people might react to you as if your Status is lower than it is. Or if you're spending consistent with a higher Status than your own, you might pass for higher status some of the time (though the GM might call for a relevant Savoir-Faire roll).

Having formal power vested in you by an organization or authority is represented by rank, which might take many forms – Military, Religious, Police, Administrative, and more. The Rank advantage comes in levels, from 0 on up. Typically, the Rank advantage is accompanied by a Duty disadvantage representing the obligations accompanying the Rank. Eric B. Smith provides a useful correspondence between modern US military ranks and GURPS ranks.

Details will vary per setting for different kinds of hierarchy, but typically having high Rank automatically bestows some Status.

You might even get multiple status bonuses from different kinds of Rank.

Status derived from Rank doesn't cost anything to maintain… other than the corresponding Duty.

In many settings, Wealth may directly imply Status, in which case Wealthy (5 x Average) grants a status of +1, Multimillionare 1 (1000 x Average) grants +2, and Multimillionaire 2 (10,000 x Average) or higher grants +3. This Status does require the same maintenance cost that having the same Status directly would.

If tracking exact bank balances for characters seems tedious, see "Alternate Wealth" in Pyramid 44: Alternate GURPS II.

Status has implications reaching through your culture; fame or infamy that might affect reactions among particular groups is reflected by a Reputation advantage or disadvantage. You might even have a positive reputation with some and a negative reputation with others for the same thing. Robin Hood would have a positive reputation among the poor and a negative reputation among the rich. A given reputation might vary from a small modifier that applies to a small group, or a large modifier to multiple large groups.

The Social Regard / Social Stigma advantage/disadvantage pair provides reaction modifiers based on one's membership in a caste or otherwise a group whose social standing is above or below average in the society at large. Depending on the details within the setting, these may also shape what social avenues are available to you or the manner in which people respond to you, not just the degree of positivity or negativity.

Privileges is the label for a collection of Advantages related to your job or position in society or among a group, but which aren't directly tied to Rank or Status. However, Privilege advantages may be prerequisites for taking a particular Rank advantage, and the Character Points must be paid for both.

They may grant authority, like Clerical Investment or Legal Enforcement Powers, or represent access like Security Clearance. They may be diplomatic status, like Legal Immunity. The Tenure advantage represents a sinecure for which you have a guaranteed income but which position can't be lost, short of gross malfeasance.

Claim to Hospitality represents being part of some organization that allows you to request room and board while travelling. You may be able to call on your hosts for trivial favors, but for anything more substantial, there should be an accompanying Contact Group or Ally Group advantage defined.

(Social Regard is also labelled a Privilege, though I included it above alongside Social Stigma among the Status advantages and disadvantages above.)

Characters are assumed to be fluent in their native language. Knowing additional languages is an Advantage. Levels of fluency are: Broken, Accented, and Native. Having Native fluency in your native language costs no Character Points; it's possible to have the Disadvantage of having Broken or Accented fluency in it. Someone could even have fluency None if they're incapable of language.

Having Accented spoken language incurs a small penalty to some rolls involving spoken language and means that you won't be able to fool a native speaker into mistaking you for a native speaker. Broken language incurs more substantial penalties, as well as requiring a successful IQ roll to be able to effectively communicate at all in stressful time-sensitive contexts like combat.

You're also assumed to be able to read and write your native language, if that's the norm in your society. Levels of Literacy are Illiteracy, Semi-literacy, Literacy. The more literate you are in a second language, the more costly the Advantage, and the less literate you might be in your native language, the more Character Points that Disadvantage is worth. If you're Semi-literate, you'll need to make an IQ roll when you read something to see how well you understood it.

See Gurps Lite p. 7 or B23-25 for more information on Language.

Cultural Familiarity with a given culture is an Advantage. Notably, it doesn't have levels: you have Cultural Familiarity or you don't. Using a skill "with a significant cultural component" has a -3 penalty if you lack the relevant Cultural Familiarity for the context you're in. B23's list of affected skills include Carousing, Connoisseur, Criminology, Dancing, Detect Lies, Diplomacy, Fast-Talk, Games, Gesture, Intimidation, Leadership, Merchant, Poetry, Politics, Psychology, Public Speaking, Savoir-Faire, Sex Appeal, Sociology, Streetwise, and Teaching – you can see that its effect is more pervasive than many other Advantages or Disadvantages that affect social skills.

Note that the skill descriptions for most of those skills don't explicitly mention that Cultural Familiarity penalties may apply and that it's not intended to be an exhaustive list. The GM should apply them when they make sense. Kromm provides examples of relevant contexts.

B23 says "the GM should use broad definitions of culture: East Asian, Muslim, Western, etc. A single nation would have to be very different to merit its own Cultural Familiarity." There isn't an official definition of how to divvy up the modern world's cultures, but Kromm says:

Behind the scenes, we use this one:

• Latin American (Mexico and parts south)
• Anglo (the U.K. and its English-speaking former colonies, including the U.S.A.)
• Western European ( "the Continent")
• Eastern European (the former Soviet Bloc)
• North African (from the Mediterranean coast south to the Sahel)
• Sub-Saharan (specifically as contrasted with North African)
• West Asian (from the Mediterranean east to Iran)
• Central Asian (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and so on)
• South Asian (dominated by India)
• East Asian (China, Japan, Korea, etc.)

Of those, I'd say you could afford to break up Latin American and South Asian further, and Sub-Saharan a lot further, if the campaign requires it.

Here's an unofficial map of that unofficial definition.

Characters are assumed to have Cultural Familiarity with their culture of origin for free. Cultural Familiarity with an additional culture is an Advantage and costs just 1 Character Point each.

Naturally, penalties for lack of Cultural Familiarity can stack with penalties for less than Native fluency in the relevant language.

There has been an unstated assumption that the characters we've talked about thus far are all average-sized adults, defined generously as ranging from 4'6" to 7' tall. They're all size modifier (SM) 0. There aren't many people bigger than that, but if you do meet one, they're SM +1. That goes up to 9', so you really won't meet any SM +2 humans. People from 3' to 4'6" are SM -1.

This has a few effects. Bigger targets are easier to hit, and smaller ones are harder – in melee, when an attacker and defender have different size modifiers, the difference of the defender's and attacker's SMs is a modifier to the attack roll (for melee or ranged combat). So if a 4' (SM -1) person is attacking a 7'2" (SM +1) person, their attack roll is at +2. If the SM +1 person attacks the SM -1 person, their attack roll is at -2.

In ranged combat, the SM of the defender is a modifier to the attack roll – it's absolute in this case, not relative. Likewise, SM modifies the Vision roll of someone trying to spot you.

If you're attempting to grapple and your SM exceeds your opponent's, your attack gets a bonus equal to the difference. There isn't a modifier for a smaller person grappling a larger person. If you're grappling someone and attempting a takedown and your SM exceeds your opponent's, you get +3 in the contest per point of difference.

It's not hard to recreate the Range table if you can remember the sequence 1, 1.5, 2, 3, 5, 7 and that 3 yards is the point at which you first get a penalty. As the penalties increase, the sequence repeats multiplied by ten, then 100, etc. Now we'll reveal the whole Range table with the gaps filled in, arranged to make the progression obvious:

That progression continues in the other direction – those distances are also the maxes of the Size Modifiers.

Those are in yards; stated more helpfully (the rules fudge the conversions a little to make for round results in feet and inches):

Anyone over 3' but less than or equal to 4'6" is SM -1. Wait, doesn't that mean anyone over 6' is SM +1 ? Well, it would, but the rules explicitly fudge SM 0 to go up to 7' and thus include all but the tallest people… but PK notes "The fact is, SM is just a little bit fuzzy. Technically, a skinny 6'6" guy could be SM 0 while a 5'11" guy built like a refrigerator might be SM +1. So it's perfectly reasonable to go either way, here!"

These also provide a guide for hitting large objects, not just people. Want to prove you could hit the side of a barn at 50 paces? Well, you'd be at -8 for 50 yards but if the barn's 30 yards across, that gives you +7.

It's tougher to hit a moving target. GURPS accounts for this in ranged combat when your target is on a vehicle (or otherwise moving faster than someone can run.) The technique is very simple – suppose someone is 10 yards away and moving at 40 mph. Convert 40 mph to yards/second by simply taking half the number in mph, i.e., 20 yards/second (it's a pretty close approximation). For the target moving at 20 yards/second just look up the penalty for 20 yards on the Range Table (-6), add the penalty for being 10 yards away (-4) and it's -10. There isn't an attempt to account for differences owing to the direction in which they're moving.

There's never a speed penalty for someone on foot. (This is a simplifying assumption; a very fast real-world sprinter could run at 10 yards/second, otherwise worth a -4 penalty.)

Because of this relationship, modifiers for Size Modifier and Range are united into one table called the "Size and Speed/Range Table" which you can find on B550. GURPS Lite provides a slightly abridged version.

All about Size Modifiers is an excellent reference. It goes into many details we haven't covered.

Any of GURPS Action 2, GURPS Monster Hunters 2, GURPS After the End 2, or GURPS Gun Fu provide a simplified range table featuring broad range bands.

Individual objects have Quality. Basic is the name of the default quality. For non-combat Success Rolls involving using equipment, Cheap or damaged equipment incurs a -1 or worse; Good is a +1; Fine is +2.

Melee weapons have different labels for quality from other objects. There is no Basic; Good is the label for the quality that offers no modifier. Cheap is worse; Fine and Very Fine are better. Quality affects how easily they break, which we'll go into later. Additionally, weapons that do cutting or impaling damage get +1 to Basic Damage if they're Fine.

From TL 0 through TL 6, weapons are Good by default. But at TL 7 or higher, thrown weapons, melee weapons, and arrows (or crossbow bolts) are Fine by default. This doesn't apply to other weapons or equipment.

Since this tutorial presumes TL 8 throughout, the damage stats have the +1 cutting and impaling damage bonus built-in. This is not the norm for GURPS stats – even in settings that also presume TL 8 like GURPS Action and GURPS Monster Hunters, the +1 is omitted to leave them consistent with other stats listings and you're expected to add it.

Analogous to how you can injure yourself by succeeding in an unarmed Parry against a weapon, you risk damaging your weapon if you successfully Parry a much heavier weapon.

There's a 2 in 6 chance of your weapon breaking if it parries a weapon three times or more its weight, with this straightforward progression:

This chance is modified by Weapon quality:

If the odds end up being 6 out of 6, your weapon definitely breaks, but at least the Parry was successful. If the odds were 7 out of 6 or worse, the weapon couldn't offer enough resistance – it breaks and you take the blow.

Parrying a strong unarmed strikes can also potentially break a weapons. An unarmed strike is equivalent to a weapon whose weight is 1/10 the attacker's Strength (you don't round.) This could occur in a mundane game with the most lightweight weapons – with Strength 15, you'd have a chance of breaking a small knife (.5 lbs.) and even with Strength 8 you'd stand a chance of breaking a stiletto (.25 lbs.)

For the weapon weights where it's liable to matter, this chart shows the weapon weights (or unarmed attack Strengths, where those are in human range) at which you have a chance of breaking your weapon.

A while back I noted that NPCs and PCs have close mechanical equivalency – both have attributes, skills, HP…

In GURPS, things have traits, too. Some have more traits than others, but in general they have HP and Damage Resistance and Health and a Size Modifier. If someone wants to smash a thing, they make an attack roll; if the SM is more than 0, the SM is a bonus to the attack roll. Outside of combat, there's usually no attack roll necessary to hit a large stationary object. In combat, there isn't a bonus to hit a stationary item per se, but since inanimate objects don't get a defense there's no reason not to use the Telegraphic Attack combat option for +4 to hit. Maybe depending on whether other opponents are in a position to attack you, you'd choose for your maneuver either All-Out Attack: Determined for another +4 to hit or All-out Attack: Strong for +2 or +1/die of damage if you do hit.

Metal Melee Weapons will probably have a DR of 6 or more; non-metal melee weapons a DR of 4; ordinary items of wood or thin metal that aren't ruggedized a DR of 2.

Like people, objects' default Health is 10. Things can also have advantages; for instance, most solid objects have Injury Tolerance: Homogenous, which gives +2 to Health. Swords are homogenous; an axe or anything attached to a separate handle would not be. Health is further modified by an object's quality.

B483 says "Cheap, temperamental, or poorly maintained items get -1 to -3 to HT; well-made or rugged ones get +1 or +2." Kromm says "Weapon Quality affects HT which in turn affects rolls for disability or destruction – see pp. B483-484. Fine gives +1 to HT; very fine gives +2. In effect, quality gives +1 or +2 to all rolls to avoid breakage, whatever form they take." Kromm's clarification makes clear that for weapons you use the same modifiers (with the opposite sign) as for chance of breaking when parrying a heavy weapon, given above. The exact correspondence of non-weapons' quality and HT modifier is less clear. GURPS High-Tech p. 11 says of gadgets that Good quality provides +1 to HT and Fine quality provides +2; perhaps that can be generalized to other objects.

HP for solid, homogeneous objects is based on 8 * the cube root of the item's weight in pounds, rounded up. For complex objects, it's 4 * the cube root of the item's weight in pounds, rounded up. Exceptionally robust or friable items might have more or less. (There's a table on B558 for items by weight; GURPS Low-Tech Companion 2: Weapons and Warriors lists HP and DR for Low-Tech weapons.)

Damage to objects is analogous to injury to people. If an object's current HP drop to less than 1/3 its maxHP, its effectiveness is halved or otherwise reduced per the GM's judgement. If it's at 0 HP or less, then for every second it remains under stress, roll against its Health. On failure, it's disabled. For some objects, that may mean broken; for others, severely impaired (B485 offers examples for what this might mean for many weapons). At -1 x maxHP, roll vs. Health; on failure, it's destroyed. And as with death, at -5 * maxHP, there are no more rolls – it's definitely destroyed. (There are also analogies to Shock and Major Wounds; see B484.)

Unliving or homogenous objects have reduced Wounding Modifiers for impaling and piercing damage, but cutting still has a Wounding Modifier of 1.5; see B380 for details.

B483-485 and B557-558 have much more information; B558 has tables of HP by weight and of DR for various materials.

One interesting application of all of this is making an attack to damage an opponent's weapon. If you're trying to break it, you're at -5 to target a Reach C melee weapon, -4 for a Reach 1 melee weapon, or -3 for a Reach 2 or greater melee weapon. Handguns are -5; a sawed-off shotgun or carbine is -4; a rifle or shotgun is -3. Or instead of trying to damage it, you can try to knock it out of their hands at an additional -2 penalty. Attacks to disarm can be made with any unarmed combat skill or any melee weapon skill, but weapons incapable of parrying are ineligible for armed attacks to disarm (unless otherwise specified, as with a whip).

The defender can Dodge the attack normally or they can try to Parry with the targeted weapon itself if it's Ready (which, of course, it isn't if it's a Parry-U weapon they just attacked with). They can't try to Parry with a different weapon and they can't Block.

If you're attacking to damage it, follow the rules for object damage above.

If you attack to disarm and the defender doesn't successfully defend, then you roll a Quick Contest of your relevant combat skills – you use the skill you attacked with and they use their skill with the weapon in hand. Either of you can substitute a Strength-based skill roll for the regular Dexterity-based skill roll if that's better. The defender is at +2 if they're wielding a two-handed weapon. On success, the weapon lands 1 yard away in a random direction. On a win or tie, the defender keeps their weapon, but unless they won the contest by 3 or more, it's unready. If you roll a critical failure in the contest, you're disarmed instead (another rare example of a defined consequence for a critical in a contest). It's strictly possible to win a contest while critically failing your roll; I'd think that both people would be disarmed in that case.

Disarming is also a Hard Technique. It defaults to any unarmed or melee weapon skill at +0 and can be improved up to +5. Retain Weapon is its mirror: it defaults to any melee weapon skill at +0 and can be improved up to +5.

It's possible to target shields or armor as well. See the Basic Set and GURPS Low-Tech Companion 2: Weapons and Warriors for details.

You may have noticed that the Parrying Heavy Weapons rules and damage to weapon rules are essentially independent. Parrying Heavy Weapons is all-or-nothing and damage is incremental. There isn't a defined way for loss of HP from damaging a weapon to make it easier to break when it's parrying a heavy weapon, nor for repeated parries of heavy weapons to damage a weapon. The Critical Miss table also offers opportunities to break your weapon that don't interact with either of the above.

We've seen several different ways to disarm an opponent, so I wanted to review.

• While grappling someone's arm or hand, try to force your opponent to drop a weapon held in that hand
• Make a grapple attack to grab the weapon itself and on your subsequent turn try to wrest it away
• Target the weapon in an attack, either to damage and maybe break the weapon, or at a further -2 penalty, to disarm
• Attack someone wielding a lighter weapon with a heavier weapon and hope they'll parry with it and it'll break
• Cripple the arm or hand holding the weapon
• Inflict Knockdown (or unconsciousness)

If you have been forced to drop your weapon, you might like it back. We saw in the original discussion of posture that you can't pick something up if you're standing or crouching. Starting from there, the quickest way to do it still takes 2 whole turns: Change Posture to switch to kneeling; Ready the item while using your Step to switch to Standing.

(See GURPS Martial Arts, p. 104 for an option to attempt it in one second.)

If you're hit by a crushing attack whose Basic Damage is equal to your Strength -2 or more, you also suffer knockback – for every full multiple of your Strength -2, you're knocked back a yard. This also applies to cutting attacks that fail to penetrate the DR of any protection you have.

When you suffer Knockback, you roll against the highest of your Dexterity, Acrobatics, or Judo, with a -1 penalty for each yard of Knockback beyond the first. On failure, you fall down.

The rules don't comment on what happens if someone who's grappling or being grappled is subject to Knockback. Kromm clarifies:

For simplicity's sake:

• If you're knocked back while grappling someone and you'd be strong enough to walk off with your victim (more than twice victim's ST), your victim is treated as something you're carrying and is knocked back with you unless you opt to let go.
• If you're knocked back while grappling someone and you're not strong enough to walk off with your victim (more than twice victim's ST), you're knocked away and the grapple is broken.
• If you're knocked back while someone is grappling you and they're strong enough to walk off with you (more than twice your ST), they may opt to keep you there or let you go.
• If you're knocked back while someone is grappling you and they're not strong enough to walk off with you (more than twice your ST), you're knocked away and the grapple is broken.

In a mutual grapple, check both conditions.

Whether Knockback is large enough to send both parties flying is getting too complex for this rules set.

Within the height range implied by your Size Modifier, a narrower range is implied by your Strength – B18 has a table. This is to provide guidance if you want to specify your character's height; this Strength-determined range isn't meant to be absolute.

The same table offers weight ranges for given Strengths, separated according to Builds. An average person has an Average build; other builds are disadvantages.

Skinny means you're at about 2/3 the average mass for your Strength. You get a -2 penalty to Disguise and Shadowing rolls, and a -2 penalty to Strength when resisting Knockback (i.e., for the purpose of calculating your Knockback thresholds).

Overweight is a quirk-level disadvantage indicating you're about 1/3 again the average mass for your Strength. You get -1 to Disguise and Shadowing rolls, but +1 to Strength when resisting Knockback, and +1 to swimming.

Fat means you're at about 3/2 the average mass for your Strength. You get a -2 penalty to Disguise and Shadowing rolls (same as with Skinny), +2 to Strength when resisting Knockback, and +3 to Swimming.

A Shove is an attack for the express purpose of causing Knockback. To Shove, roll against Sumo Wrestling or Dexterity; your opponent may attempt any Active Defense (it's not a Success Roll against Dexterity, Acrobatics, or Judo as it is for Knockback from an attack whose Basic Damage exceeds your Knockback threshold). If you hit, roll Thrust Damage at -1 per die if you used only one arm, or unmodified Thrust Damage if you used both arms. If you used Sumo Wrestling and have it at DX+1, you get a +1/die damage bonus; if you have it at DX+2 or better, you get a +2/die damage bonus. Then double that result.

If it exceeds your target's Knockback threshold, they're knocked back the corresponding distance, but it only causes the Knockback; it does no damage. Well, unless a wall or other obstacle gets in the way, but we're getting ahead of ourselves.

Ollie has Strength 19 and Sumo Wrestling at 14. He shoves Stan using both arms, and succeeds; Stan fails his Dodge. Ollie rolls his 2d-1 Thrust Damage and gets a 9. For Knockback purposes, this is doubled to 18. Stan has Strength 10 and is skinny, so his Knockback thresholds are as if he had Strength 8, so an 18 means he's knocked back 3 yards and needs to roll against DX at -2 to remain standing. Stan has a DX of 9, rolls an 8, and falls down on his back.

The rules don't suggest that maneuver choice is limited, so I assume it can be used with any maneuver that includes an attack, e.g., it could be the first attack of an All-Out Attack: Double, or you could get +4 to hit with All-Out: Determined, or you could get +2 or +1/die to Basic Damage with All-Out Attack: Strong.

Maximum Effective Strength doesn't apply, so there's no maximum Basic Damage. I'm assuming that the Sumo damage bonus occurs before doubling and that the All-Out Attack: Strong bonus would, too, but I haven't seen a ruling on the subject.

The rules don't specify that you need to be in Close Combat to attempt a shove, but that seems reasonable. Per the clarification above, if you're being grappled by someone with less than double your Strength, a Shove could be a viable way to break the grapple. But you'd need an ungrappled arm and empty hand to attempt it.

When you collide with something, the damage you take depends on your velocity and your maxHP – maxHP is used as a rough measure of your mass. The Basic Damage in dice is maxHP*velocity/100 (rounded conventionally – round up to next whole value if there's a fractional part of .5 or more). If that results in less than a die of damage, < .25 is 1d-3; < .5 is 1d-2; anything else is 1d-1. (There are tables; you'll never have to figure this out at the table.)

This is the damage for hitting a soft and yielding surface. The result is then doubled if it's a hard surface.

This produces a straightforward progression when viewed as damage by the product of velocity and maxHP:

Viewed by combinations of particular velocities and maxHP values, it looks more complicated.

For the purposes of collision damage, your velocity is the number of yards you were knocked back (even though of course one would be moving more slowly near the end of the range than near the beginning – it's a simplifying measure).

Suppose that in our previous example, there was a wall just 1 yard behind Stan.

Stan doesn't need to roll against DX to remain standing, but does need to roll for damage. Stan's velocity is 3 yards/second and his maxHP is 10, so he rolls 1d-2 and gets a 3. It's an unyielding surface, so this is doubled and he receives 6 points of crushing damage.

Damage from falling is just a specific case of collision damage. If x is the distance (in yards) you've fallen, your velocity is the square root of 21.4*x, rounded to the nearest whole number, but you don't have to remember any of that – here's a table with damage by distance fallen.

You can express the information more compactly if you use the damage as the row header.

This might seem like a weird way to view it, but remember that for any one given character you only need to consider one maxHP, so this makes it easy to just record the breakpoints you'll care about on a charsheet, and just a few rows will usually be plenty. For a character with maxHP of 15:

Eric B. Smith's Collision/Slam/Falling Damage Table is likely to handle any case you need, even under a variety of different gravities. GURPS Action 2, GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 2, DFRPG, and Discworld provide a simpler table for falling damage based on distance alone, with no dependency on maxHP.

Why don't we use the Strength / Height / Build guidelines to actually specify a particular mass for your character and use that to determine collision damage instead of using maxHP as a proxy for mass? Why don't the build modifiers modify collision damage? Well, because.

Likewise, B19 notes that Basic Move might be more realistically derived from your Strength to mass ratio than from Health and Dexterity. GURPS may put more effort into offering verisimilitude to the real world than many games, but it really isn't trying to be a physics or physiology simulator.

If you don't have a convenient wall to try to shove someone into, you can always hit them with your entire body. A Slam is an attack in which you run into your opponent, rolling Dexterity, Sumo Wrestling, or Brawling to hit. You can use it with Attack, All-Out Attack, or Move and Attack. Notably, with a Slam using Move and Attack, the usual -4 to hit and max of 9 don't apply. With an All-Out Attack: Determined or All-Out Attack: Strong, you may move your full move, and aren't limited to 1/2 Move like usual. With an All-Out Attack: Double, the usual 1/2 Move applies and the Slam must be the final attack, but you can attempt another attack in the moment before impact.

Your opponent may attempt any Active Defense; if they successfully Dodge, you keep moving at least 2 yards past them (if you had the movement to spare). If that means running into something, roll for collision damage.

If you hit, your velocity for the purpose of computing your target's collision damage is the number of yards you moved this turn (it can't be attempted on someone with whom you're in Close Combat) and you use your MaxHP.

But your target also rolls damage against you using their maxHP and your velocity. Or, if they had been in motion toward you on their previous turn, both of you use the sum of your velocities, i.e., your relative velocity – the number of yards they moved on their previous turn plus the number of yards you moved this turn.

As with Shove, if you used Sumo Wrestling and have it at DX+1, you get a +1/die damage bonus; if you have it at DX+2 or better, you get a +2/die damage bonus. Brawling doesn't offer a damage bonus for slams.

If your target does twice as much damage as you or more, you're knocked down. If you do twice their damage or more, they're knocked down. Otherwise, if you match or exceed their damage, they have to roll against Dexterity or be knocked down.

A slam starting from Close Combat would be useless since the yards moved and thus your velocity would be zero… unless your opponent had just moved toward you on their previous turn. If they had just moved 3 yards into Close Combat with you, I suppose you could slam them on your turn with a relative velocity of 3.

Ollie has a maxHP (and current HP) of 20. Stan has a maxHP (and current HP) of 10. Starting from 5 yards away, Ollie does a Move and Attack to Slam Stan. He rolls Sumo Wrestling at 14 and succeeds – because it was a slam, there was no penalty or cap on the Move and Attack. Stan tries to Dodge and fails. Ollie's velocity was 5, so with a maxHP of 20, he does 1d damage. But he has Sumo at better than DX+2 so he gets a +2 to damage (Ollie's DX is 11 and Sumo is DX+3). He rolls a 5 and so does 7 points damage. Since Stan is Skinny, his Knockback threshold is just 4, and he's knocked back 1 yard. He rolls against DX to see whether he falls, and succeeds. But Stan has a maxHP of 10, so 7 HP is a Major Wound and Stan will also need to roll vs. Knockdown. Stan has a Health of 10 and 2 levels of Hard to Subdue, but rolls a 13. He drops what he's holding and falls down and he's stunned. Since he's down to less than 1/3 his maxHP, he's also Reeling and his Move and Dodge will be halved until he heals.

But Ollie's Slam means Stan has also hit Ollie at a relative velocity of 5 yards/second. At a maxHP of 10 and no Sumo skill, that does 1d-1 damage; Stan rolls a 5 and does 4 points damage to Ollie.

Ollie's slam caused more than half as much damage to himself as it did to Stan. Then again, Stan's knocked down, stunned, and reeling with 3 HP while Ollie still has 16 HP. Still, Slam is a risky attack that probably isn't the best choice outside of the largest of maxHP differences.

Skinny, overweight, and other Build disadvantages do not affect Slam damage calculation, though as we saw above, they still affect the Knockback that could occur.

DFRPG replaces Slam damage calculation with a new method.

Use the best of Sumo Wrestling, Wrestling, or Judo (or DX):

• make an attack to grapple or to grab a weapon

Use the best of Sumo Wrestling, Wrestling, or Judo (or DX or ST):

• a Quick Contest to make or resist a takedown

If you have it at DX+1, you get +1 to these, or if you have it at DX+2 or better, +2:

• an attack to grapple or grab a weapon or a defense against either
• a Quick Contest to make or resist a takedown
• a Quick Contest to break free from a grapple or weapon grab, or to resist someone else breaking free

Parrying with either of Sumo Wrestling or Wrestling is two-handed, thus requires two empty hands. As with Brawling or Boxing, you are at -3 to Parry weapon attacks other than melee thrusting attacks.

The rules don't specify that you need to be using a Parry with Sumo Wrestling or Wrestling to get the defense bonus for having either at DX+1 or higher when defending against a grapple/grab weapon attack, so one can presume it would apply to a Dodge as well. It wouldn't be relevant in defending against a weapon grab otherwise, as Parrying with Sumo Wrestlig or Wrestling precludes holding a weapon. (Block isn't relevant because the grapple attempt must happen in Close Combat where Blocks can't be attempted.)

If you're grappling someone, you can attempt an arm lock or choke hold.

Besides grappling, you can use it for slam and shove attacks (though anyone can attempt an unskilled slam or shove with Dexterity).

If you have it at DX+1, +1/die to Basic Damage for slam or shove, if you have it at DX+2 or better, +2/die.

As with Boxing, you're at -2 to parry kicks.

If you have it at DX+1, +1 or if you have it at DX+2 or better, +2 to make or resist any of these:

• pin
• arm lock
• any lock or hold in general

Judo's parries are one-handed, like the unarmed striking skills'.

Like Boxing and Karate, if you retreat while parrying, your parry gets a +3 bonus instead of the usual +1 bonus for retreating.

It shares several other aspects with Karate:

• there is no penalty to parry an armed attack, even if it's a swinging attack
• if you attack with Judo and someone successfully parries with a weapon, the defender's automatic attack roll is at -4
• Judo rolls take your encumbrance level as a penalty

An aspect that's unique to Judo is throwing someone. If you used Judo to successfully Parry an attacker during a Reactive Phase, during your subsequent Active Phase you can attempt to throw them with an attack roll against Judo (provided they're still within 1 yard). You may choose All-Out Attack: Determined, but not Double or Strong. They defend normally; if they fail, you throw them. They land with half their body is either in the same place they started or in the same place you are but you choose the direction, so the other half is pointing wherever you choose. Your opponent has to roll vs. Health; failure means they're physically stunned (any of Fit, Very Fit, or Hard to Subdue apply).

If you took the opportunity to throw them into someone else, that person must roll against the better of ST+3 or DX+3 or they're knocked down.

If you're already grappling someone, on your turn you can attempt throw them. According to the Basic Set, this is "exactly as if you had parried his attack", i.e., with a Judo attack, but Martial Arts specifies that it's a Quick Contest of your Judo skill vs. the best of your opponent's Dexterity, Strength, or Grappling Skill.

In Close Combat, you can substitute Judo for any Dexterity roll except drawing a weapon or dropping a shield.

A throw can be used with the explicit attempt to do damage; see Martial Arts for details.

The Power Grappling perk has two benefits.

You can attempt a takedown with a Strength-based grappling roll instead of Dexterity-based. More generally, for any Dexterity-based grappling roll except for attack rolls or parries, you can substitute a Strength-based grappling roll.

In any Strength-based grappling contests, you can substitute a Strength-based Sumo Wrestling, Wrestling, or Judo roll for a Strength roll (but you waive any Strength bonus you might otherwise have had for Sumo Wrestling or Wrestling).

This is particularly beneficial for high-Strength Wrestlers who don't have high Dexterity, or for skilled Judoka, who become much better at choke holds or arm locks.

If you're making a Strength-based skill roll instead of a Strength roll, are you now eligible for All-out Attack: Determined with its +4 instead of just All-out Attack: Strong with its +2? That makes a certain amount of sense but seems imbalancing and I think I'd say no.

With some weapons, it's possible to grapple using your melee weapon skill (or with a cloak, it's possible to grapple with your Cloak skill). See GURPS Martial Arts for details.

As we've said previously, the difference between not having a skill and having it is usually -4. Having a skill at all denotes some substantial level of expertise… at least compared to someone who doesn't have it at all.

But we've also noted that most things can be attempted without the skill and non-combat situations typically have a +4. There are also bonuses for taking extra time and having the right equipment. In GURPS terms, lots of people in the real world do things for which they don't have the relevant skill but get by with defaulting to attribute.

GURPS Martial Arts features extensive coverage of historical martial arts and how you'd represent their practitioners. What it doesn't have is additional unarmed combat skills. It sticks with Brawling, Boxing, Karate, Sumo Wrestling, Wrestling, Judo, and adds lots and lots of Techniques. A real-world martial art in GURPS terms is a fighting style. A Style is characterized by specific combat skills and techniques, as well as some skills that aren't directly combat-related. So a practitioner of the Jujutsu style has the Karate and Judo skills; a Krav Maga style practitioner knows Karate and Wrestling, etc. Boxing, Karate, Sumo Wrestling, Wrestling, and Judo – all the unarmed skills but Brawling – are also the names of Styles. Each of those styles prominently features its eponymous skill, of course, but not just that skill.

Having a combat skill in GURPS means actually knowing how to use it effectively in real combat. Practitioners of competitive, regulated martial arts who have only trained with the presumption that rules exist – boxing, wrestling, judo, etc. – won't have the corresponding combat skill, per se. They'll have a related Combat Art or Combat Sport skill. In short, Combat Art is for exhibition and emphasizes precision and grace, while Combat Sport is for competition and emphasizes being able to land a blow or execute a move on an opponent but not how forcefully you do it. The GURPS Martial Arts Designers' Notes discusses the distinctions.

Sport, Art, and Combat varieties default to each other at -3. An Olympic Judoka with Judo Sport at 19 would still pose a challenge for most unarmed fighters.

These distinctions exist for combat skills in general, not just unarmed skills. One could have Thrown Weapon (Knife) Art or Guns (Rifle) Sport.

The Throwing Art skill is a cinematic skill conveying the ability to effectively do damage with nearly anything one could throw and is its own thing unrelated to Combat Art.

Sports are Dexterity/Average skills that require a specialty; having the skill connotes "the ability to play a particular sport well – perhaps well enough to earn a living" (B222).

Many specific sports activities correspond to distinct defined skills – Bicycling, Running, Swimming, Climbing, Jumping, Throwing, Acrobatics, etc.

Games are an IQ/Easy skill that requires a specialty. Though an IQ-based Sports or Combat Sports roll could be used for basic knowledge of formal tournament rules, the relevant skill to judge or referee would be a Games specialty. Chess or Go or other games could also be specialties.

These are catch-alls for things not otherwise defined that you might want to represent as a skill. Hobby skills are Easy, and Professional skills are Hard. The Controlling Attribute is Dexterity or IQ.

Dexterity-based examples might be Hobby (Juggling) or Professional (Glassblowing). IQ-based examples could be Hobby (Comic Books) or Professional (Beekeeping).

What's the difference between calling something Hobby (Juggling) vs. just saying that the GM has added a Dexterity/Easy Juggling skill? Or given that Connoisseur is an IQ/Average skill, what's the difference between calling something Professional (Philately) vs. Connoisseur (Stamps)? Not a lot. The Hobby and Professional skills exist to provide guidelines to make it easier to represent something that isn't covered elsewhere.

Expert skills are IQ/Hard skills to cover most anything IQ-based that should be Hard and isn't better covered by one of the above. Notably, Expert skills are meant to be academic and exclusively knowledge-based. If a skill has a practical, tangible use, it should be represented by something else. So Expert (Epidemiology) means you're great at looking up whether there was an uptick in in flu cases in the Rocky Mountain states among people aged 28-45 last year, but doesn't imply any First Aid or Diagnostic ability.

What if you really want a Dexterity/Hard skill that doesn't fit anything else already defined? Or an IQ/Hard skill that has practical, tangible applications? Then you make one up and don't call it an Expert skill.