House Rules

This thread will be for indicating some things that aren't necessarily in the book that will be standard for game play for both PC's and NPC's.

You are welcome to make suggestions and they may or may not be approved or otherwise modified.

Well, I've always like the "Flesh Wounds" optional rule.

GM EDIT: I'll have to look into this. I'm not familiar with it.

GM EDIT: Consider this a house rule.

Armory rules.
4th ed omitted armor training for heavy armor. That's crap! having actually fought with sword and shield in full plate and let me tell you, even with current lighter stronger metal IT IS A SKILL!

For GURPS games that I run its only required for armor using the term plate. The skill required to work, banded, ring, scale, chain mail are all insignificant to require a skill. For that purpose the Armory Skill is only DX easy. As a bonus, for every level over 12 you gain movement and defense modifiers.

+0 - standard or average
+2 - reduce DX weight/movement penalties by 1
+4 - improve dodge by 1
+6 - reduce DX weight/movement penalties by 1
+8 - improve dodge by 1

GM Edit: Consider this a house rule.

Shield skills

After PD was removed from GURPS the inherent defense bonus from a shield became almost useless. Shields now only provide a single extra active defense which you would get from an off hand weapon. Moreover an off hand weapon skill can be improved to add an addition attack as well... so why have a shield which now effectively ties up the use of you off hand for no reason? This does not properly represent the inherent advantages to having a "MORE" defensive skill when there is no added defense.

To represent the inherent bonus to a more defensive skill I allow all players with shields to use their shield instead of their dodge so long as the shield is readied. A player gains two active defenses to "Ready their shield." this means moving to address a flanking opponent or setting their shield after moving. an extra ready is gained at level 16 and 20.

Maneuver: Shield Bash
Default 0
An attack with your shield to do trow/stun/push damage. Damage thrust bashing -1. Shield must be readied once a bash has been made.

Understanding Cinematic Wealth.

Starting wealth is 0 or Average (starting) wealth. This means you have decent clothing that can even be stylish to a point and as many changes as you feel a character of that day and age may have. As this is a fantasy setting more than three changes of clothing at this level is uncommon. You are suspected of having a place of living and if you do not, you are suspected to have enough money to get a decent nights sleep in an Inn. Your characters weapons and equipment is all well kept and of good quality as you are also suspected of having all equipment needed for your chosen profession. This level of wealth usually provides some item of decent quality that represents all of the skills you have in any given trade and would be considered as carrying or holding back at your place of living. Your profession is expected you pay some excess of money to your bills which also suggests a level of spending cash for food or services. NPC's of a higher wealth level are likely to take you less seriously and gain a -1 social modifier for every level of wealth they hold beyond yours. People Bellow you wealth level are more libel to try and hit you up for money and might receive a +1 social modifier for every level of wealth you hold above them.

Highest level of wealth 5 or multimillionaire. Money is no object, you have access to hordes of supplies, the most current form of international travel, several housings in which are all large and of refined quality, servants and guards that obey your every command, respect of the highest court, any item or service you bloody well want up to rare items of legend of which you might very well have at least one.

Dead broke -5 otherwise Jhya. The clothing on your back, items you specifically need or have made, some loose coin.

I disagree, the Shield skill is invaluable as it is.
Dodge is one of the hardest defense mode to increase, and while it's also the most powerful (basically, if you have Dodge at 15 for all intent and purposes it is impossible to hit you unless the enemy has a rapid fire weapon and an extremely good skill level with it).
Parry has some benefits over Shield but requires massive specialization and strategy to be effective.
Most weapons with decent damage are 0U (can't defend and block in the same round), and every conservative parry with any weapon except fencing weapons are at -4, which in reality limits most parries to a single one per turn, or two if you are extremely proficient with the weapon (skill level of 20 gives you defense at 13 and 9).
Fencing weapons can't block many weapons (Flails for instance), and are extremely frail and light, resulting in the fact that they either can't defend against large weapons, or are prone to breaking if the rules are followed throughly.
Shields on the other hand are the easiest skill to increase being DX/E, are capable of defending against ranged weapons and provide bonus to other active defense.

Beyond that fighting effectively with two weapons requires alot of specialization, which is not always viable for most character types.
As such the shield skill is very useful, for instance in another game I have a character with a parry defense of 15 with weapon master (that effectively reduces consequentive penalties to -2) still has a shield skill.

The only modification I see viable is that the blocking isn't limited to once per turn, and should be given the same penalties as parrying.

The innate benefit of having a shield is the Block. Even the best shield only gives you a +2 to your dodge. At an average that's only 7. As you only get one block with your shield its almost entirely pointless because you could just have an off hand perry an eventuality work your way up to a second attack. Yes this costs more in skill points representing the fact that a shield is an easier tool to learn but the benefit there is minimal. All I did was make the shield more attuned to its actual benefit which is allowing it to provide a block instead of your dodge and provided situation where in you wouldn't be able to block unless you used it as an active defense to move your shield. This is actually a lot like it worked in 3rd ed when they still had PD. The PD of a shield + your armor was impenetrable in excess of +5 to +6. You only got one active block but your dodge was comparable to your block where in it was usually only reduced by 1 or 2 as compared to the block. This was to represent the fact that your character didn't have to move very much to keep the shield in the way. With 4th ed this is almost completely lost now that PD no longer exists.

Without properly representing the inherent bonus of a defensive skill such as shield, From a number crunching perspective, I'd rather take an offhand weapon with a basket hilt and work my way up to the second attack with the offhand weapon.

Page 417 in the Campaigns book. It's listed under cinematic combat rules, but I don't think it's quite so bad. In essence a character can spend one unused character point to modify (in this case) damage taken as a result of combat. (You take one point of damage using the book rule...but I don't suggest using that much power. You might instead reduce damage by half or something.)

One way that I've modified it in my games is that I allow someone to use the character point to change any one die by one point after rolling. So if I absolutely need to hit something that is going to kill me, and I miss by one... I could modify it to a hit. It also is useful in non-combat situation, but is less likely to be used there.

Flesh Wounds
Immediately after you are hit in combat you may spend one unspent character point to declare an attack is reduced by any amount, down to one point of damage (meaning at your option you could take 3 points of damage instead, etc.).

I will not be modifying this to alter other die rolls at this time as I plan on using bonuses like that for incentives and plot bonuses (like the holiday season bonuses).

This is being implemented because the price is significantly costly and works to keep the characters alive in the event something horribly wrong occurs.

You may utilize the flesh wounds optional to a certain extent to dramatize your wound. An example would be the cop that takes an SMG to the chest, uses a character point and says his vest absorbed it. The character would still be on the ground and very well could be "left for dead" by the attacker (depending on their motivation). Another example would be a nasty sword would that bleeds ridiculously at first, but is actually a rather minor wound, making the opponent think they may have disabled that limb on your character, which you could use for a sneak style attack later, etc.

I may opt to alter this rule at any time as it is in the "experimental" stage, this may include certain penalties centering around the event.

The shield skill will remain as is. Having fought with various types of weapons I can say that putting a barrier between you and the enemy is MUCH easier to succeed with than splitting your brain in two to parry an oncoming attack with an off hand weapon. The notion that not everyone has access to off hand weapon parry training is taken into consideration, but still doesn't negate the fact that it's easier in almost every case to get behind cover than it is to change the direction of an incoming assault.

The shield tweak reflects that basic representation of the laws of motion. The fact that it also makes it so number crunchers will think twice before pairing their weapons is just a nice side effect and it also doesn't take away the nice advantages that come with pairing weapons.