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