Silhouette Animals
$Revision: 1.14 $

Preface

To be honest, I'm quite disappointed with the animals provided in the original Gear Krieg manual. I think that the choice of animals is too limited, and on top of this, the few animals we get don't seem to make much sense to me.

My present campaign is more "generic pulp" than "strictly Gear Krieg" oriented, so I needed more animals (even dinosaurs), so I've decided to roll my own. As a starting point I wanted an encyclopedic source of good quality, something that could be accurate and included an easy-to- translate data.
GURPS source book are usually the best answer for these, so I've turned to GURPS Bestiary. I've managed to get an old copy (1988), but I think it is more than adequate for my work. I hope everybody agrees that GURPS supplements are usually fairly good and can be considered a valid reference for representing stuff in game terms.

Modus Operandi

GURPS Bestiary (GB, from now on) provides he following stats for each animal:

STrength, DeXterity, IQ, HealTh, Damage, Armor, Weight (in lbs.) ST, DX, IQ and HT are on a linear scale, with human average at 10 and "normal" human maxima around 20.

On top of this, we get other data regarding speed, habitat, and 3-4 paragraphs describing the animal.

Here is how I proceeded to convert animals from one system to the other.

BUI:
GB offers a weight range for the animal. I take the average value and convert this using the BUI table on page 143.
AGI:
DX is the nearest equivalent, so I convert GURPS DX as follows: (DX - 10)/3 rounding towards zero.
INS:
Most animals in GURPS have IQ 4, so INS= (IQ-4). A potential conflict exists regarding INS and IQ, though. IQ is Intelligence in human terms (and animals have a suitably lower value than average humans), while in Silhouette INS is a separate value, one whose description seems more linked to the ability to function efficiently in the wild.
The formula I have adopted makes "intelligent" animals like dogs "smarter" than animals which have superb ability to fend for themselves but very little else (like sharks, for example). If you think that I'm missing the idea of what INS really means, feel free to change the values.
FIT:
Similar to GURPS HealTh, so FIT=(HT - 10)/3 rounding towards zero.
PER:
I consider animals usually as more perceptive than the average human, so they start at PER 1. Animals noted for their especially keen senses will get a bonus, or some skill to better model this.
WIL:
Animal will have a 0 in WIL generally speaking, but predators will start with WIL:1, and the same goes for stubborn animals like camels or mules.
STA:
I have used the standard algorithm in the book, the only change I made is allowing for a minimum STA value of 5, instead of 10.
Armor:
GURPS armor system is finer-grained, being divided in Damage Resistance and protection. I'll take the higher of the two values and multiply by 5 to obtain the equivalent armor value.
The armor value may sometimes refer to something equivalent to the Thick- Skinned advantage.
STR:
even if STR is actually a derived value in Silhouette, I have decided to obtain the value by multiplying GURPS ST by 7,5 Kg., and then use the BUI table to obtain the final STR. If you disagree with this decision, you can easily substitute this with the value obtained by BUI and FIT.
Damage:
I've tried to convert the raw damage indicated in GB to an equivalent multiplier.
Example:
Alligator bite is listed at 1d6+1, cutting. The equivalent value, on the weapon table, is a great axe swung by a normal human. This means, in turn, that the multiplier should be 14 in Silhouette (3 AD + 11 for the axe).
GURPS damage may be a little too detailed: apart from the numeric value it is defined as cutting, crushing or impaling. In the end it seems to me that the value for damage should be more or less the double of maximum GURPS damage (i.e. Gurps:1d-5=2 Silhouette, Gurps 2d-1=22 Silhouette and so on...) The GK manual is not very clear on this, but I think that this value should be used without extra modifiers: i.e., don't add the UD bonus to this value when calculating damage.
Speed:
average human in GURPS moves 5 yards/round. To obtain the sprinting speed in Silhouette, I just multiply the GURPS value by 5.
Skills:
Unless the animal description hints to special cases, I'll stick with what the GK manual says. The exception to this is DODGE, which is a statistic under GURPS, and can be calculated as follows:

DODGE Skill= (Gurps Dodge -4)/2 (Rounding up). Along with Dodge I have listed the (optional) bonus to hit the animal, derived from size (BUI).

Skill are always shown as follows:

Name [Based on]: Level+Characteristic+(specialization1, specialization2)

where:

Name:
is the name of the skill (i.e. Flying, Swimming etc...)
Based on:
governing characteristic (usually AGI)
Level:
number of dices for an average member of the species
Characteristic:
bonus for an average member of the species
specialization:
extra bonus for specific use of the skill (for example, a bird may have 1 level in Flying and an extra +1 in Swooping).
Example:
Notice [PER]: 1 (smell, hearing)
Means that the creature rolls just 1 die for Notice, but has a +1 for acute smell and another +1 for hearing.

Hand to hand is considered at 1 for domesticated animals and 2 for wild animals, unless special cases apply.

You may add 1 point to some (or all) values for pack leaders, special breeds and so on. On the other hand, young (or very old) individuals, starved or diseased specimens may have a -1 or even -2 to the same values.


Animals Aquatic Animals Dinosaurs