Rolls
Rolls
This section is a brief guide to the whole GURPS game system. The Basic Set spans two thick volumes, but most of that is detail, “color,” and special cases. The game system is actually easy. GURPS is designed to be “friendly,” both for the player and the Game Master. The rulebooks include a lot of detail, but they’re indexed and cross referenced to make things easy to find. And all the detail is optional – use it only when it makes the game more fun.
There are only three basic “game mechanics” in GURPS. Learn these and you can start to play.
A “success roll” is a die roll made when you need to “test” one of your skills or attributes. For instance, you might test, or roll against, your Strength to stop a heavy door from closing, or against your Guns skill to hit an enemy with your pistol. The only dice used in GURPS are six-sided ones. Roll three dice for a success roll. If your roll is less than or equal to the skill or ability you are testing, you succeeded. Otherwise, you failed.
For example, if you are rolling against Strength, and your ST level is 12, a roll of 12 or less succeeds.
Sometimes you will have modifiers to a roll.
For instance, if you were trying to stop a very heavy door from closing, you might have to roll against Strength at -2 (or ST-2, for short).
In that case, with a Strength of 12, you would need to roll a 10 or less to succeed. Rolling a 10 or less is harder than rolling a 12 or less, just as stopping a heavy door is harder than stopping an ordinary one.
For an especially easy task, you would get a bonus to your attempt. You might roll “Animal Handling+4” to make friends with a very friendly dog.
If your Animal Handling skill were 12, a roll of 16 or less would succeed. Making a roll of 16 or less is easier than making the base skill roll of 12 or less, because a friendly dog is easy to deal with.
For more details see Success Rolls.
A “reaction roll" is a roll made by the Game Master (or GM) to determine how his nonplayer characters (NPCs) react to the player characters. This roll is always optional; the GM may predetermine reactions. But sometimes it’s more fun to let the dice control the reactions. To check reactions, the GM rolls 3 dice and consults the Reaction Table. The higher his roll, the better the NPCs will react, and the better the treatment they will give the PCs.
Many traits give reaction modifiers that add to or subtract from reaction rolls. If you have a +2 reaction due to your good looks, the GM will add 2 to any reaction roll made by someone who can see you. This is likely to improve the way they behave toward you!
For more details see Reaction Rolls.
A “damage roll” is a roll made in a fight, to see how much harm you did to your foe. Damage rolls use the “dice + adds” system.
Many things can affect the final injury inflicted by your attack. Armor reduces the damage received by the wearer:
Certain attacks do extra damage if they get through armor.
“Critical hits” can do extra damage.
All these things are explained in the combat rules. But the combat system is “modular”; you can use all the rules for a complex, detailed, realistic combat simulation – or just those in Chapter 11 for a quick game.
There’s another important systems – but you don’t need to know it to start with.