GLAIVE Mini: Weapon Builder System for GURPS

Don't settle for off-the-rack weapons from the local blacksmith. Build your own! T Bone's Games Diner is proud to present GLAIVE Mini, your super simple, single page weapon builder system for GURPS.

Fresh off the anvil

The full (non-Mini) GLAIVE (GURPS Light Arms Invention Expansion) is a complete design system for low-tech melee and ranged weapons of any shape and size, generating unique thr and sw damage, readying time, Reach, and more, based on the inputs you provide. As you'd expect, though, a universal system like that won't fit into a short page or few. And while you can use GLAIVE with GURPS 4e, it's still awaiting complete modernization.

For the simplicity mavens, GLAIVE also offered an alternate system so simplistic as to be almost non-existent, amounting to little more than a suggestion to read weight and damage right off of GURPS' Size and Speed/Range Table. But with a little hammering and varnish, that turns out to be a surprisingly useful tool.

That's what I've extracted from GLAIVE to create GLAIVE Mini. At its heart is still a simple table tying weight to damage, but you now get weapon ST as well. From there you modify damage and ST up or down for simple considerations like unbalance, length, and two hands, and then... well, that's actually it. A new weapon, built in mere seconds.

It's very simple (and similar to building combat skills with COSH). Yet GLAIVE Mini will recreate most existing GURPS weapons with no change to stats (while recreating a few with changes that are arguably improvements). Best of all, like GULLIVER Mini it's a whole system in one page, with a bonus page offering examples, notes on realistic design, tips for building oddball weapons, and a fully-developed new goodie for GURPS that even the full GLAIVE barely touches on: semibalanced weapons, great for heavy-chopping machetes and agile polearms and other all-new instruments of mayhem.

It's a free PDF download and technically for GURPS 4e (though you can hammer the rules to fit 3e where necessary). Get out there and churn out some custom steel!

GLAIVE Mini needs your help!

It's new, it's lightly tested, it's probably hiding an error or two. Did you spot any design mistakes? Are there any important considerations left out?

And here's a good question for you. GLAIVE Mini is built on a reverse engineering of existing GURPS weapons, which is why it can recreate so many of those with no change in stats. Do you see a different set of modifiers and rules that does an even better job of recreating existing weapons?

Finally, what are your original GLAIVE Mini weapon designs? Let's start a Mini armory here! 

Please leave your thoughts and suggestions in the comments. And – final request – if you find this and other gaming toys on this site useful, please take a moment to see how you can support the site.

Thank you. Now go take your mightiest-thewed character and give him a real barbarian's axe.