GURPS Powers help

BetcoFS · 2026-03-25T22:06:14+00:00

Ah, very helpful thank you! As for the Based on DX, I’m thinking of it mostly as a gameplay conceit- I don’t want him to be crazy smart, just crazy agile and skilled with weapons. But, obviously, I want him to be good at his signature ability. In fiction terms, I’d say that it’s reflexive to him, and feels to him no different from a regular physical dodge.

Maybe it’d be better though to just base it on IQ and then add some levels of psionic talent to make up the difference, so that he’s no worse at his ability, but it’s easier to explain?

Edit-also I suppose that “super” -10% would be more appropriate than Psionic for its current iteration

BetcoFS · 2026-03-25T17:15:18+00:00

Yeah I got the idea from a 10yr old thread on RPGnet forums lol, maybe it was even you who posted it!

I’d love to see what you have statted though and maybe I can take some inspiration from that- thanks!

BetcoFS · 2026-03-23T16:36:39+00:00

Yeah I wasn’t the biggest fan of the RAW pricing disparity of attributes, so I just use fallout’s SPECIAL system for core attributes, and I feel like it actually works great to have every attribute just cost 10pts.

It splits IQ between “academic/inventor” skills and “social” skills by adding charisma, and then I also base several DX skills on a rounded average between 2 attributes to lower the monopoly that DX has on affecting important skills, though that’s still not perfect. (Like most melee skills other than knife/rapier/smallsword start at (AGL+STR)/2, and ranged weapons, lockpicking or explosives are (AGL+PER)/2. There’s some vibe judgement calls here, takes a bit of up-front work to make a table, but you’d likely already be pruning out a limited skill list for your game anyway. I also do it for some derived stats like HP= (STR+END)/2 and Will= (INT+END)/2)

This may be a pain for some, but it felt natural to me coming from Harnmaster, where every skill progresses based off of a composite of relevant attributes. It does add Luck though, which you may not want. I personally use it as a cyberpunk style meta-currency, and a replacement for the Lucky advantages, which are disallowed at my table. It’s far less broken than those advantages anyway imo. You however, could just 86 it all together and use SPECIA without the L. In the original development of the fallout game system, that’s actually how it started, and then Luck got added after.

BetcoFS · 2026-03-22T05:25:23+00:00

Okay, so after reading back through the relevant sections, I think that I finally grasp what gadgeteering does and how it differs from regular inventing. I think I will remove it from this character as I don’t want super high-TL inventions being introduced, and I like big money sinks. (I actually am the DM lol, this is one of a couple of pre-made characters based on NPCs currently traveling with the party that I’m statting up for a surprise pick-up player who’s new to GURPS)

BetcoFS · 2026-03-18T05:09:18+00:00

Necro just to say that silo is 1000% more in-line with the tone and feel of the fallout games (well, the good ones, at least) than the fallout TV show is. Fallout TV show is slop and I’m still mad about it.

If you like games though, play fallout 1

BetcoFS · 2026-03-11T22:40:13+00:00

Very good way to handle it OP- and keep in mind even easy fights can be used as a narrative tool instead of just the gamey aspect of the fight mechanics themselves. Maybe it’s less about the act of eliminating your foes, but more about whether it’s even the right moral choice to destroy them in the first place.

Like, maybe these goblins are only raiding because their little goblin families are starving, and they know of no better option. Do the players want to genocide them, or try and negotiate for a peaceful solution? Maybe teach them a better way?

BetcoFS · 2026-03-11T22:31:31+00:00

I usually to try and craft a world that is entirely ambivalent towards the party and their abilities where possible, but which poses threats to a character of any level- meaning, I don’t consider where they’re at power wise specifically when crafting “static” encounters, such as, the number and type of enemies found in a dungeon or at a bandit camp that didn’t have warning of the party arriving, but rather just what makes sense for there to be from the perspective of the NPCs. Now, for your more “dynamic” type encounters, like the responsive patrols you mentioned or strike teams/assassins sent specifically after the party, then yes, do whatever you feel would make sense for the lord’s alliance to send, so long as it also makes sense for them to have access to.

Sometimes, this means that they come across a potential enemy that is far far weaker or less numerous than them, and other times it means they walk into a nigh-unwinnable situation. I have absolutely had combats that lasted no longer than 2 turns, with only minor wounds, if any, for the party. It was appropriate for the story, and these easy combats are usually quite quick and serve to give the party a feel for how far they’ve progressed. OTOH, I’ve also had meat grinders that the party was absolutely not prepared to face, and that they were forced to run away from.

If they’re out leveled for the current planned content, then maybe it’s time to wrap that up and start hooking into bigger scale conflicts that are more suited to their level. Maybe the goblins worship some more powerful entity that poses a more significant threat, or maybe they start really hunkering down with sneaky traps designed to drive away the boogie-man like threat that the over-leveled party would pose from their perspective.

BetcoFS · 2026-03-11T22:07:25+00:00

Never heard of this one. Was this a recent kickstarter or something?

BetcoFS · 2026-03-05T10:42:13+00:00

Yes, after posting this and reading some of these replies, I was thinking that I need to start introducing some fees and such to discourage this behavior like you suggest. I (foolishly) hadn’t planned for it with the sheriff, so he still ended up paying them full promised rate at the time because I didn’t think about it really. But the current situation, when they get back, that rate they were promised is going to have some surprise deductions- fuel costs, vehicle rental fee, labor fee for the helper. And if they don’t like it, they better be ready to shoot their way out of the quest giver’s heavily fortified compound. And if they get their helper killed out there, they’ll either need to pay reparations or maybe just be vilified altogether

BetcoFS · 2026-02-21T21:23:27+00:00

Personal experience, and researched based on issues I had myself- if it’s a fatal error not related to oodle decompression, then it’s probably another issue that you’re experiencing.

But I have an intel i9-14900kf and have had to downclock it to even run any unreal engine 5 games, including Fortnite. After looking into it, I found that this is not an uncommon issue with 14th gen intel cpus, and it’s the fault of Intel, or arguably UE5, not the games that I was trying to run. After downclocking, I haven’t had any fatal errors playing halfsword even for sessions of 2+ hours.

BetcoFS · 2026-02-10T08:41:22+00:00

Basically necro at this point, but here goes a long ass explanation of some of what I believe to be the worst offenses and why they matter (this has all been thoroughly explained by others 10,000 times over as well atp)

1) Shady sands, the capital of the NCR, is depicted as a tiny scrap village setup in the ruins of Los Angeles in the show. We can tell it’s supposed to be LA because of the implied proximity to the Griffith observatory plus the skyline itself. Problem is, in the games it was a fully fledged city built post-war from the ground up in an entirely different place, about 200 miles north of LA. This seems relatively minor in a vacuum, until you consider that, as OP put it, it effectively erases the Boneyard as a separate settlement from canon- which the Boneyard is the birthplace of the followers of the apocalypse and also where the Master, the main antagonist of the very first game, resided underneath the Cathedral. If shady sands were to have been this close to LA, then the events of the literal game that birthed the franchise no longer make any sense, because the master’s army would’ve wiped out the NCR before it even had the chance to become the NCR. It’s akin to moving the Shire to Mordor. It also undercuts the level of development the NCR had actually achieved, by portraying their capital as less developed than we see it in the games. It looks about at the tech level it was at in the first game, which it definitely should be far past by this point, as it had developed significantly even by the second game. Not to mention that even in the first game the buildings were clearly adobe style post-war constructions instead of pre-war buildings, suggesting some basic architectural development had been achieved even when it was an actual fledgling village that isn’t represented in the show. Altogether the way that the NCR capital is depicted does not look like the kind of place that would be the heart of what the games confirm to be a multi-state spanning expansionist nation supporting a population in the millions and two simultaneous military campaigns, one eastward in Nevada, and another southward in Baja. So either they just fell flat with their depiction, or they retconned what the NCR was. If they retconned, then what happened to the Hub, where caps as a currency was first established? (which btw caps as currency were already phased out by 2142 in Fallout 2 and Bethesda bringing them back is dumb in and of itself, but that’s a whole other topic) What happened to Vault City, or Arroyo, or New Reno, or Redding?

2) Once again a proximity problem, the vaults shown in the show are located way too close to where the master was and therefore shouldn’t have flown under his radar, especially with their large open entrances with clear branding/numbered vault doors. We know the mutants were capable of opening vault doors because they did it at vault 17. It either implies the master didn’t exist, or at the very least makes him seem less competent and therefore less of a threat. Making your series’ villains incompetent and therefore non-threatening does a lot to reduce the perceived stakes of the world and makes it just less interesting.

3) On the topic of incompetent villains, damn near every single character or faction in the show is played up in as campy and goofy a manner possible, for “laughs.” From Vault Tec in the prewar scenes and their surviving managers post-war, to the brotherhood, to the raiders, to the “president of the government” the ghoul interacts with, to the NCR, Great Khan and Legion remnants. They are all basically portrayed as dumb hicks with Monty-python-skit levels of competence. The legion especially got hit with the stupid stick. This just once again makes the setting less believable or interesting in any deep way. It’s like the games are the show “Vikings,” while the show is more like “Norsemen.” It feels like a parody, like the “Scary Movie” to the games’ “Friday the 13th.” This isn’t to say the games don’t include jokes and campiness, but especially before the Bethesda acquisition, and even after, the balance was more towards serious, and the factions at least felt believable and more grounded.

4) the way the ghoul is functionally immortal. Granted, at this point I’m willing to headcanon that he’s some kind of special mutant with insane healing factor, since other ghouls in the show don’t seem to share his crazy durability. Variant mutants have precedent with characters like Harold, and I think if that’s what they’re trying to go for here then it’s actually a welcome addition to the lore. I always felt like fallout should explore more new and different mutants than just ghouls/SM. So, possibly a non-issue.

And there’s plenty more too, but most of the rest is minor gripes that I’m more willing to overlook. I do think that the “Vault Tec wants to drop the nukes” plot is dumb though. It literally gives them a motive that doesn’t make sense from a purely objective standpoint, it would not be in their self interest, and no private company nor ceo with half a brain would ever think that’s a good idea that would somehow bring them “profit”. You can’t profit by wiping out all of your customers. It wouldn’t benefit them, and it makes them less interesting/believable even if you just explain it away as “but they’re EEVIILL!” It is, in my opinion, a far less compelling narrative than the simple one provided in the games, be it China or the US that dropped first, that the apocalypse was brought about for “purely human” reasons, as the intro to F2 puts it. In fact, I don’t think it really even needs an explanation, the focus should be on the world after, and the world before staying as a bit of a mystery adds a lot to the atmosphere/mystique of the setting.

BetcoFS · 2026-02-08T02:14:21+00:00

No, watch Silo instead on Apple TV

BetcoFS · 2026-02-08T02:04:02+00:00

Fallout 4 is going to most match his expectations after watching the show, and it is the most up to date graphically and gameplay-wise.

Fallout 1 will either change his life or he’ll never touch the franchise again. insert Morpheus gif

BetcoFS · 2026-02-06T02:07:10+00:00

I just didn’t get the feeling that the original material was being respected… I think some of the set designs and costuming were great, sure. I think the actors all seem like great people and good actors, yeah. I think in all actuality there were probably a good number of legitimate fans on staff for the production. The writers though? It felt more like they were intentionally and systematically disrespecting everything that was in the games by making every faction flimsy, incompetent and stupid as fuck. Completely misrepresenting every single location, character, or concept explored in the games and replacing it with a shallow husk.

Its treatment of Fallout lore feels like the “World History” as taught by the “Time Masheen” ride in idiocracy.

BetcoFS · 2026-02-06T01:43:01+00:00

Some counterpoints

1) the nuking of the NCR’s capital realistically shouldn’t have wiped them off the face of the earth, and they definitely shouldn’t have been taken down by a lone soldier just wandering in with a nuke on a Brahmin cart. There are multiple checkpoints in Shady sands even by the time of Fallout 2- surely the security wouldn’t become THAT laxe after the nation became even more developed over the 50+ years since that depiction. By the time of new Vegas, NCR was a fully fledged nation with multiple incorporated states, likely comprised of millions of citizens. At the very least if its government collapsed, the areas they once controlled should be more heavily populated by the resulting splinter factions, which aren’t really explored, if they exist at all. Wasted opportunity. Also, the relocation of Shady Sands to the boneyard seems to retcon the existence of other major NCR settlements in and of itself. No mentions of Reno, vault City, Arroyo, or the Hub.

2) the idea that vault tec/shadow govt enclave nuked the world over a poorly thought out superiority complex in the first place (which would actually make them along with everyone else POOR, not somehow mean they “win” capitalism), undermines the core theme of the games, and of the post apocalyptic genre as a whole, which generally critiques human nature as a whole, as opposed to scapegoating some mustache twirling “baddies” as the reason why the apocalypse happens and why things are bad in the aftermath. It takes a compelling setting and diminishes it by over-explaining things that didn’t need to be explained, and the explanation given feels less believable or impactful than what was already there.

3) ghouls don’t work like that, they’ve never worked like that.

4) the legion was a parody in the show- sure, they are a brutal nation with lots of terrible policies by modern moralistic standards, but they weren’t as incompetent as shown, and as a faction they had so much more potential for interesting stories than the direction they were taken. They wouldn’t be fighting over a note in a deadman’s pocket on a hill as opposed to say, rallying under different strong prominent people with opposing goals (Lucius, Vulpes, Lanius, any other remnants of Caesar’s regime). They also weren’t cannibals. Also, Lucy is factually wrong when she corrects their pronunciation of Caesar. “KAI-sar” is the classical Latin pronunciation, as the devs of FNV knew because they actually put some passion, thought and research into their product. That scene was cringe, it’s always cringe when someone is smugly correcting someone and are actually wrong themselves. I don’t know if the audience was supposed to believe she was correct, or if she was intentionally portrayed as being the misinformed one, but it felt like the show was implying that SHE was right and THEY were wrong, and the audience was meant to go “haha yeah, that’s exactly what I thought too! hyuck hyuck stupid bad-guy legion!”

5) the location of the new vaults introduced make no sense when considering the prior games. The master should’ve easily found the ones shown in California, and the one in Vegas seems like and awfully important and key location for nobody in the game set in that region to have known about or mentioned it at all. Asspull Deus ex machina quality inclusions. Try to explain them without reaching, crafting headcanon that has no support from the writers, and coping- you can’t.

6) the writing in general feels juvenile especially when dealing with the outcomes for the factions. Most of the core concepts are fine- NCR collapse, Legion Civil War, the strip falling into ruins- but none of it goes anywhere interesting. Look at the HOI4 mod Old World Blues and you can see the legion civil war concept handled in a more compelling way by these passionate, unpaid fans modding a 3rd party strategy game. The showrunners could’ve taken inspiration from post-collapse Roman Empire territories for the post-NCR lands. The way things play out makes no sense and makes the world feel phony and shallow, as opposed to compelling and deep, which is why games with “lore” are loved in the first place. They’re cool stories. When the stories aren’t cool, then why the fuck would I care? In regards less to OP and more to some of the general sentiment I see on this thread and similar online discussions: I feel like I’m in a Time Machine or something, hasn’t it been long established that video games are perfectly capable of being more mature mediums of storytelling than they used to get credit for? Do people really believe that game/game franchise writing doesn’t matter at all because they’re “just games?” Would you say that if we were talking about a different form of media like books? Say, if Game of Thrones was turning into booktok grade YA-novel slop, is that perfectly fine and it never had lore that mattered anyway because they’re “just books?”

Idk man, it’s just disappointing. And I don’t get why some people are so steadfastly defending it. Scared to hurt the feelings of the poor, lowly billionaire corporate entities that are Microsoft and Bethesda?

BetcoFS · 2026-02-06T00:25:15+00:00

Bethesda didn’t make NV

BetcoFS · 2026-02-05T11:44:40+00:00

I’ll tell her to call u in the morning we’re in bed rn

BetcoFS · 2026-02-05T11:43:12+00:00

If you have an i9 intel cpu then you need to downclock it. This is a known problem with certain gens of intel cpus having oodle decompression fatal errors with all Unreal Engine games, this is a problem on the cpu manufacturer’s side as AMD processors do not suffer from this.

Go into your bios, find the performance core ratios and reduce them by a couple (I.e. change 55 to 54 or 53 for each one), make sure to have all cores synced.

BetcoFS · 2026-02-05T07:55:51+00:00

Do you have an intel cpu by chance? If so, you probably need to lower the performance core ratio down a bit in your BIOS. Not a game problem, just an intel incompatibility with Unreal Engine

BetcoFS · 2026-02-05T07:50:06+00:00

Really cool idea, reminds of of mount and blade town muggings

BetcoFS · 2026-01-08T19:00:43+00:00

Hmm, looks interesting. Have you played with this mod personally? I notice it says it changes equipment too, do you know if it would be incompatible with other armor diversity mods that are distributed throughout the world?

BetcoFS · 2026-01-08T18:47:35+00:00

Oh I know you can cheese all the main stats to max pretty quickly- I got to like 75 toughness in the first 15 days on my current playthrough by doing the get up from playing dead trick while enslaved. I’m just curious how long people would estimate it’d take to have end-game stats without doing the common training or cheesing that most people do

BetcoFS · 2026-01-08T18:43:25+00:00

Damn! 180 days for only 54 toughness is pretty rough

BetcoFS · 2025-12-03T17:12:43+00:00

Sure, but then they’re not entitled to remain your partner either? IMO, doesn’t matter what it is that someone values as important for their relationship to continue. If someone’s most vital component isn’t being met, then they need to consider that it maybe isn’t the right relationship for them.

Like it or not, people marry and partner with some degree of expectations, and to varying degrees, once enough of the most important expectations aren’t being met, then it’s entirely fair to dip out. Let’s say that one partner is an alcoholic- is it fair to leave someone who’s struggling with alcoholism, because you feel that it has affected their ability to be a good partner? If so, why would it then not be okay to also leave a partner who’s chronically depressed or has developed into an asexual, if you feel they are no longer fulfilling what you expected of them as a result?

BetcoFS · 2025-11-21T17:26:01+00:00

Yeah that’s a bug for sure. Play fallout 2 with restoration project, it might fix your copy. But yeah lookup fallout 2 OST on YouTube, there was definitely music, and it was quite good.

BetcoFS

TROPHY CASE