Shadowjack's GURPS House Rules

These are the guidelines and house rules that I use for GURPS 4e character creation, placed here as reference for games that I run, or character write-ups that I share. — Shadowjack

Defining the Numbers

Just what do the numbers mean? Here's how I try to think of them.

Attributes

Because of the bell curve, attributes of 8 to 12 are essentially unremarkable, "average" people; the range is there simply to differentiate characters who are close together. Only above or below this range is a character really noticeable for that attribute; 6 or below is handicapped, and 18 or above are superhuman or fictional. (The traditional exemption is Strength, which can go higher among top weightlifters.) Remember that advantages and disadvantages may be rolled into attributes, i.e. someone with HT 11 and Very Fit is about as fit as someone with HT 13, and just as noteworthy.

• 5 or below is crippled, requiring constant help. (For humans, of course; animals may go lower quite naturally.)
• 6 is handicapped, barely functional on your own.
• 7 stands out in a crowd as "pretty bad", but might be mistaken for low average when seen on its own.
• 8 is a natural lack of ability.
• 9 could be a 10 with a little effort.
• 10 is dead average. If you don't care or don't know, the attribute is probably a 10.
• 11 is a 10 who tries harder.
• 12 is natural ability.
• 13 stands out in a crowd as "pretty good," but might be mistaken for high average when seen on its own.
• 14 is noteworthy. People describe you by it, i.e. "He's this real tough/smart/quick guy," and remember things you've done.
• 15 is renowned. You'll be sought out or avoided by those who've heard of your ability.
• 16 is admitted by the best to be among the best.
• 17 or 18 are almost never seen in real life; this is the realm of myth and legend.
• 19 or above are superhuman.

Skills

This is for the actual skill number and ability; to measure experience, figure the numbers as if the attribute were 10. (After all, if it's a skill you've studied, you'll always have at least 1 point in it.) Note that combat skills should probably be a little higher than other skills, because they must perform reliably under stress.

• 8 or below – Raw beginner. Just starting to learn, or that half-remembered college course which you still use a little of.
• 9 or 10 – Amateurish. Acceptable for a hobby.
• 11 or 12 – Routine competence. Acceptable for a primary job skill, or important secondary skills used often.
• 13 or 14 – Qualified expertise. Acceptable for primary skills used under stress.
• 15 or 16 – True expertise. A noted specialist, or skilled under fire.
• 17 or 18 – Elite. Better than normal, even in extreme situations.
• 19 or 20 – Outstanding. Your world-renowned, able to name your own price.
• 21 or 22 – Legendary. You're the best of your generation.
• 23 or more – Superhuman. Seen only in myth or fiction.

Reaction Modifiers

These guidelines apply to Talents, Reputations, and other reaction modifiers. Remember that Social Stigma and Social Regard are essentially Reputations you receive simply for being part of a commonly-recognized group.

• ±1 is noticeable ("Hey, that guy's pretty good at that." "Oh, you're one of those.") but it isn't worth repeating.
• ±2 is memorable. Stories about you get around. ("You know that guy who—?")
• ±3 gets you into the record books. People will seek you out or avoid you based on this alone.
• ±4 is admited by the best to be among the best, or admitted by all to be the worst.
• ±5 or more is beyond real life, and into the realm of myth.

Frequency Rolls

Self-control rolls, NPC appearance rolls, etc. Note that I prefer to flip the descriptors for self-control rolls, i.e. you don't resist your Bad Temper quite rarely, instead you have a Bad Temper almost always.

• Constantly is constant, of course.
• (15-) Almost Always practically defines the character. You're simply that way all the time, except the few notable occasions when you aren't.
• (12-) Frequently or Quite Often is a constant issue that comes up every episode or every other episode, in at least some way.
• (10- or 9-) Sometimes or Fairly Often affects you now and then, but at times it can be overcome, neglected, or even forgotten.
• (7- or 6-) Occasionally or Rarely is essentially a character quirk or perk that once in a while takes center stage.

Relationships & Social Traits

Most NPCs you interact with, from strangers on the street through employers and employees to family members, are just plain acquaintances. They have no plot immunity or player control; they just show up when they show up. To determine their behavior towards you, you make a Reaction roll, use an Influence skill, or rely upon GM fiat. Unless you took a Sense of Duty, you have no particular bond to them.

Anyone with which you have a Claim of Hospitality has by default a Good reaction to you. Hospitality is guaranteed so long as you are hospitable in return, and you can request other help as you could with anyone else.

You may use various skills to make incidental contacts as needed, but a Contact is a long-term relationship. When they are available, they provide not just their specific skill, but also commentary upon their organization's activities, the chance to trade other small favors, and so on. (If you wish to tie reliability to reaction: Completely Reliable is Very Good; Usually Reliable is Good to Neutral; Somewhat Reliable is Neutral to Poor; and Unreliable is Bad.)

Allies fall into three categories:

• Normal Allies: (Including non-sapient Pets.) They have a Sense of Duty toward you, and you have a Sense of Duty toward them; remember, there is no extra point cost for this, as it's included in the trait. This is equivalent to a Very Good reaction.
• Unwilling Allies: There's no mutual regard; their reaction to you is Bad or worse, but you have a hold on them.
• Minions: They have a Sense of Duty to you, possibly even Fanaticism – like an Excellent reaction. You don't necessarily have a Sense of Duty toward them!

You also have an automatic Sense of Duty toward any Dependents. If another PC would be your Dependent (e.g. they're your child or ward), handle that relationship as a simple Sense of Duty (the 2-point Individual version); their protagonist power is balanced by your legal responsibility for them.

Enemies are always after you specifically. Enemies acquired simply as part of your job or social standing (e.g. enemy soldiers if you're a soldier, police if you're a criminal, assassins if you're a head of state, paparazzi if you're a celebrity) aren't worth noting; they come with the territory, and if you change careers, they go away. Only note such people as an Enemy if they're after you personally, regardless of your job, or if you're especially notorious compared to others in the position (e.g. "Most Wanted").

Both Rank and Status are forms of Influence. Rank is usually maintained by a Duty to the employer, while Status is maintained by your Wealth and good social behavior. When dealing with lower-level characters, you usually get a reaction bonus equal to the difference in Rank or Status, as appropriate. When dealing with higher-level characters, if their reaction to you is already Neutral or worse, or your level is negative, you usually get a reaction penalty equal to the difference, or -4, whichever is better for you. Rank can be used to request assistance from your organization, and includes an appropriate level of security clearance, equipment allotment, etc.

While Rank is official, a Patron provides help off the record or under the counter. However, many organizations act as a Patron to their members in addition to their formal support; use the Rank when dealing within the organization, and the Patron when dealing with the outside world. If you own an organization yourself, represent this by taking the highest level of Rank and the organization as a Patron. You have an automatic Sense of Duty toward a normal Patron, but not toward a Minimal, Secret, or Unwilling Patron. (If you wish to tie reliability to reaction: a normal Patron is Very Good; a Minimal Assistance Patron is Neutral; and an Unwilling Patron is Bad or worse.)

Clerical Investment and Legal Enforcement Powers are both forms of Authority, and are usually tied to a Rank and Duty. To some degree, you can extend the powers of your Rank to people outside of the organization.

Money Matters

I rarely bother to track money directly, so the existing job and cost of living rules don't do me any good. (I also personally suspect the numbers of not quite adding up anyway.) Instead, use the lifestyles given on the sample Cost of Living and Status tables as follows.

If you are self-supporting, from a job or profitable adventuring, you are able to maintain a Lifestyle based upon your Wealth level:

• Dead Broke = off the bottom of the chart – you have nothing!
• Poor = Lifestyle -2
• Struggling = Lifestyle -1
• Average = Lifestyle 0
• Comfortable = Lifestyle 1
• Wealthy = Lifestyle 2
• Very Wealthy = Lifestyle 3
• Filthy Rich = Lifestyle 4
• Multimillionaire 1 = Lifestyle 5
• Multimillionaire 2 = Lifestyle 6
• Multimillionaire 3 = Lifestyle 7
• Multimillionaire 4+ = Lifestyle 8

If you live off of an allowance or investments, or rely upon some form of social support (be it welfare and food stamps, or the perqs of exalted office), then you are granted a Lifestyle equal to your Status.

Examples:

• A lazy Multimillionaire (Status 2) lives as well as someone working hard at a Wealthy job: Lifestyle 2.
• A Poor person (Status -2) is going to be poor whether they work as a wageslave or life off the dole: Lifestyle -2.
• A nation's president (Status 7) might only have a Comfortable salary (Lifestyle 1), but he lives at Lifestyle 7 as long as he holds that office.
• An average citizen (Status 0) could be a Struggling student (Lifestyle -1), an Average worker (Lifestyle 0), or make a Comfortable living (Lifestyle 1), or could be living as a homemaker with Lifestyle 0 courtesy of their spouse.

Please note that you need to have both Status and Wealth appropriate to the character. Taking these rules literally, a Status 0, Average Wealth character would have Lifestyle 0 whether they worked or not… but an ordinary person with no job or other special standing wouldn't be Status 0, Average Wealth, now would they?

You can maybe support one other person without greatly impacting the Lifestyle, but to support a whole family drops your Lifestyle by 1 level if you're the only wage-earner. To have two Lifestyles (e.g. to support an alternate identity), drop your main Lifestyle by one level, then take a second Lifestyle one level below that.

Example: A Wealthy character with Status 1 could:

• Work full-time and live singly with a Wealthy Lifestyle.
• Relax and live singly with a Comfortable Lifestyle.
• Work and support a family with a Comfortable Lifestyle.
• Relax and support a family with an Average Lifestyle.
• Fight crime instead of working, living singly with an Average Lifestyle, and maintaining a Struggling-quality safehouse or base elsewhere.
• Fight crime and support a family with a Struggling Lifestyle, while also maintaining a Poor quality bolthole in secret.

Assume you spend roughly 30 to 50 hours a week maintaining your Lifestyle – even more at lower Tech Levels, even less at higher Tech Levels. If you have a "normal" job in the industrialized world, this is spent commuting and working, with a little grocery shopping on the weekends, and doing your taxes once a year. If you're a peasant, you spend the time scrabbling in the fields, mending your meager possessions, lying sick of plague or malnutrition, and begging for mercy from the local warlord. If you're on the dole, you're standing in line, walking long distances to follow rumors of job openings, bargain hunting to stretch the food budget, and begging for mercy from the welfare agency. If you're rich, you're touching base with your lawyer and broker, networking with potential business connections, and attending that dreadful party to keep your great aunt's side of the family happy. Goodness knows how people spend their time at TL12.

Debt increases the amount of time you have to work, and Independent Income decreases the amount of time you have to work, by 5% per level. Someone with Debt 20 is essentially working two full-time jobs, with barely any time to rest, let alone play games or go on adventures, while someone with Independent Income 20 doesn't have to work at all.

Keep in mind that time spent working is an average spread over the year. Farmers often have plenty of spare time in the winter, but almost none during planting and harvest. A middle-class worker with a moderate debt could have a normal 9-to-5 job, but he skips vacation and works more overtime than his co-workers.

Advantages

Languages

Record spoken and written languages separately, using the following comprehension levels:

Speech: None [0]; Broken [1]; Accented [2]; and Fluent or Native [3]. You only get one Native language, unless you're bilingual or specially-trained; your native tongue is the one you usually think in.

Literacy: Illiterate [0]; Semi-Literate [1]; Literate [2]; and Educated [3]. An easy way to represent an uneducated character is to drop their primary language down to Literate, saving a point; they can read and write, but they aren't comfortable doing so.

Write these up like so: English (Native/Literate) [-1], Elven (Accented/Educated) [5], Chinese (Broken/Semi-Literate) [2].

Disadvantages

Self-Control Numbers

I prefer to note adjectives instead of self-control numbers; it scans better.

• 6- = Almost Always
• 9- = Frequently
• 12- = Sometimes
• 15- = Rarely

The following disadvantages should also have self-control numbers:

• Guilt Complex (used to resolve the Chronic Depression)
• Stubbornness

New & Modified Disadvantages

Ditz (-5 or -15 points)

You have an uncanny affinity for gross mental and social blunders. You do not necessarily have a low IQ (you may have up to IQ 13 and still select this trait) but you are more awkward than your IQ would suggest. This disadvantage comes in two levels:

Ditz: Make an IQ roll to get through the day without making a social gaffe, leaving the motor running and the lights on, or mixing up important files. This is rarely life-threatening, but it is inconvenient and often expensive. The GM should be creative in inventing minor torments. You should especially avoid laboratories, records rooms, and televised interviews. -5 points.

Total Ditz: As above, but in addition, any failure on an IQ roll or IQ-based skill roll is oncisdered a critical failure for you! -15 points.

This trait might seem silly, but it need not be. It differs from Absent-Mindedness, in that you remember all right – you just get confused, or remembered wrong, or went ahead and did something boneheaded anyway.

This is the mental version of Klutz.

Elderly (-3 per level, maximum three levels)

For each level of this disadvantage, you have already passed one of the aging thresholds.

Pacifism

Reluctant Killer is now a separate disadvantage; see below. The other types of Pacifism are voluntary moral codes, equivalent to Vows:

• Do Not Kill (-10)
• Harm No Innocents (-10)
• Self-Defense Only (-10)
• Total Nonviolence (-30)

Violating your Pacifism does not necessarily provoke a nervous breakdown, any more than breaking any other Vow would.

Reluctant Killer (-10*)

In order to use deadly force against a person, you must make a self-control roll at the moment of attacking. You only need to roll once per opponent per fight.

If you fail this roll, you absolutely cannot fight that particular person. You must retreat, surrender, negotiate, use an absolutely non-lethal attack (e.g. a sleep spell, OC spray), or even curl up into a ball and scream – anything but hurt them.

If you succeed, you may fight that particular person, but you still hold back your blows, unconsciously, throughout the fight. You may not Aim, and you suffer a penalty to each attack depending on your self-control number:

• 15- Rarely = -2
• 12- Sometimes = -4
• 9- Frequently = -6
• 6- Almost Always = -8

Halve the penalty if you cannot see your foe's face and are not in close combat.

No roll is required nor is there a penalty to attack a vehicle or building whose occupants are hidden from you, an opponent you do not believe is a person, or a target you cannot actually see.

If you do kill a recognizable person, intentionally or accidentally, you must make another self-control roll. If you fail, the result is as if you were exposed to a Phobia: roll 3d, add the amount by which you failed your self-control roll, and look up the result on the Fright Check Table (p. 360).

If you hurt someone visibly – bleeding, screaming, etc. – roll at +4. If they don't appear to be hurt, on the other hand, you don't have to roll at all.

In realistic games, most characters come with some degree of this disadvantage; those with combat training or a "killer instinct" may buy it off.

Trickster

A variation of this is Fighter, for those who crave the excitement of interesting battles; the effects are otherwise the same. You need not kill your foes, unless you also have Bloodlust.

Skills

Name Changes

I prefer to use the following names, instead of those in the book:

• Anthropology (any species other than human) — Sophantology
• Crewman: Airshipman — Airman
• Crewman: Seamanship — Sailor
• Environment Suit: NBC Suit — Hazard Suit
• Environment Suit: Vacc Suit — Spacesuit
• Fortune-Telling, when it is actual divination, instead of cold reading — Soothsaying
• Linguistics (any species other than human) — Xenolinguistics
• Psychology (Applied) — Socializing (see below)
• Psychology (Experimental) — Psychology (see below)

Planet Types

The way the rules-as-written handle planet types is fine for space opera, but for realistic games, I prefer stricter detail.

Biology, Farming, Geology

Specialize by world of origin, e.g. "Terran" for Earth and worlds settled and terraformed by Terrans. Individual worlds are familiarities.

One could also specialize in "Universal Biology," which gives one vague knowledge of all manner of life and life-like systems.

Geography, Naturalist

Specialize by specific planet, e.g. "Earth," "Luna," "Mars."

Geology, Meteorology, Survival

Look to the Planetary Classification Mailing List and specialize by planetary class or type, or even group or subtype; the depth of knowledge decreases with the size of the category. For Meteorology, both planetary makeup and the liquid type matter.

Modified Skills

Archaeology

This is a TL-dependent skill, and is primarily the technical skill or recovering and preserving artifacts. It covers only enough knowledge of ancient cultures to guide recovery – for more detail, you'll want an appropriate History specialty or Expert Skill.

Cartography

This is a TL-dependent skill.

Erotic Art

This is primarily based off IQ, not DX, as the most important thing is awareness and understanding of your partner and yourself. However, there are still DX-based and HT-based rolls and techniques. Erotic Art also counts as an Influence skill, under the right circumstances. Both Physiology and Psychology are useful companion skills.

Psychology

Psychology (Experimental) is now simply Psychology, and is TL-dependent. It serves as the mental counterpart to Physiology: a successful roll allows you to avoid the penalties for using certain skills on members of other species. These skills include most of those covered by cultural familiarity penalties, plus Body Language, Brainwashing, Erotic Art, Psychiatry, and Sociology. To effectively deal with true aliens, you have to understand both the species and the culture!

Psychology (Applied) is now called Socializing, and works the same as it did before.

Variant Skills & New Specialties

Expert Skills

• Espionage: Comparable to Military Science – an understanding of intelligence operations and capabilities.

Professional Skills

• Tradecraft: The practical knowledge of a spy: dead-drops, contact and evasions, use of cipher pads and coded signals, recruiting assets, etc.

Farming

One variant is Aquaculture, the skill of operating fish farms, oyster beds, and the like.

Geology

One variant is Hydrology, the study of a world's oceans, rivers, etc. You must specialize by planet type and liquid (usually Water, Ammonia, or Methane).

Linguistics

You can specialize in Comparative Communications Theory, in which case you have vague knowledge of all forms of communications.

Mecha Skills

In cinematic mecha campaigns, one may treat Driving (Mecha) like Environment Suit: you can use any usual DX-based skill (e.g. Acrobatics, Karate) through your mecha, using the lower of the two skill levels.

Some campaigns may even have mecha variations of all combat skills, e.g. Mecha Broadsword, Mecha Guns (Shotgun), Mecha Wrestling Sport. Such skills default between the normal versions at -3.

Performance

One variant is Circus Performance, which covers types of performance intended more to shock than to amuse or inform. You must specialize by the particular act: Fire Eating, Sword Swallowing, Pin Head, etc.

Physician

Other medical disciplines are treated as variants of this skill: Dentist, Optometrist, Psychiatrist, etc.

New Skills

Interviewing (IQ/A)

Defaults: IQ-5, Interrogation-3, Socializing-4.

This is the ability to question someone politely, as in a formal interview, or in a social situation. Unlike Interrogation, you can pump someone for information without their realizing it! This skill is resisted by Perception, instead of Will.