Thursday, December 12, 2013

GURPS efficiency

Sometimes GURPS gives you the means to do things that you never would. A template for Innate Attack is given for an implanted 9mm SMG. It costs 33 points. For 2 points, you can buy Extra Arm: Weapon Mount, allowing you to mount an SMG into your arm just the same, purchased with cash, of which the player will probably have plenty for buying an SMG (except at low tech levels, SMGs are among the cheapest of all guns, because they about as simple as you can get for a repeating arm). This Extra Arm method also allows the gun to be swapped and upgraded with anything compatible with the mount, removed if desired for some reason, and so on. Sometimes GURPS gives means to do things in inefficient ways. To build a dual wielding warrior, you can spend 25 points on extra attack, or buy off the two weapon attack penalty for 5 points (and another 5 to either buy off the off-hand penalty for that weapon, or 5 for ambidextrous for same for everything), which only allows dual wielding with that particular skill. But for most players? They'll just stick to the one type of dual wielding if they can help it. A character who's concept is very explicitly 'dual axe wielding berserker' is unlikely to randomly go "hmm, nah, time for dual swords now", they'll stick with their nice axes as long as they don't break. If they break, the player is more likely to buy new axes rather than just switch weapons. Just because you can, does not always mean it is the most effective way to do it. It pays to read the whole book and compare methods of achieving a goal.

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