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 – now updated to version 2.0! 

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 remains 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 system customization notes, ideas for handling a couple of 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, agile polearms, and other all-new instruments of mayhem.

It’s a free PDF download made for GURPS 4e (though you can hammer the rules to fit 3e where necessary). Pick up your blacksmith hammer (i.e., your pencil) and churn out some custom steel!

Is GLAIVE Mini right for you?

Now that you know what GLAIVE Mini is, let me note clearly what it isn’t:

• GLAIVE Mini is not my proposal for an ideal weapon design system for GURPS.
• GLAIVE Mini is designed to recreate existing GURPS weapons (primarily from the Basic Set, with a nod to Low-Tech as well), not to rethink weapon stats from the ground up.

As such, here’s why you might not get big use from it:

• GURPS’ weapon tables are pretty darn packed as they are! Whatever sort of weapon you’re looking for, chances are you’ll find something close in Basic Set or another book.
• While GURPS’ weapon stats were (apparently) generated by the “eyeball it” method of balancing properties, not through some consistent system, they do a pretty good job with consistency! There are some rough spots, but overall it’s hard to find a listed weapon that’s inexplicably inferior, or one so superior within its category that other offerings seem moot. New rules releases generally keep improving things, too. (An example: The Basic Set’s cutlass provides one minor peeve, in that it offers the same goods as a shortsword, plus free brass knuckles, at a lower price and with no drawbacks. Low-Tech nicely remedies this with a higher price for the cutlass.)
• GURPS has been rolling out rules for creating tiny or huge versions of weapons, one of the original omissions GLAIVE sought to fill. GURPS’ rules are squirreled away here and there, and we may have to wait for Basic Set 5E to get them all in one place, but official rules do exist now.
• GLAIVE Mini doesn’t attempt to solve all the oddities and mysteries of GURPS’ weapon offerings. For example, I’m not a fan of how the move from a short unbalanced weapon to a long unbalanced weapon in GURPS generally hits the wielder with a sudden triple whammy: higher required ST, plus a requirement for two hands, plus unreadiness after a swing. GLAIVE Mini doesn’t fix this with a smoother progression for these criteria. Likewise, it doesn’t codify the seemingly-haphazard appearances of the “U” Parry on GURPS weapons, or provide a systematic way to determine a unique design’s usable skills and appropriate defaults to other skills. These, and many other properties, remain something you’ll have to eyeball.
• Generation of weapon cost would be a fine addition to GLAIVE Mini, but that’s not part of the offering now!
• By intentionally trying to replicate existing weapon table stats, GLAIVE Mini is decidedly human-centric. That is, unless you break out GURPS’ separate rules for tiny beings’ weapons, a 0.25-lb. blade using GLAIVE Mini will – just as on GURPS’ tables – inexplicably require a very human ST 5.

All right. That said, here’s why you might find GLAIVE Mini useful after all:

• It remains a fine way to fill in gaps on the GURPS weapon tables. If you want a Pixie’s or Giant’s sword, GURPS’ weapon scaling rules may be your best bet. But if you want, say, a human-scale longsword that’s just a wee lighter or heavier to custom match a given PC’s brawn, GLAIVE Mini lets you create such a design with systematic consistency.
• Likewise, where GLAIVE Mini results do veer a bit from the GURPS weapon tables, you may prefer its results! Redoing your campaign’s weapon table entirely, knowing that all of the listings (as well as any future additions) are generated via a consistent design scheme, is the sort of thing some GMs like.
• The new Semibalanced weapon option is nifty, and is simply right for designs like hard-chopping machetes or agile polearms. Give it a try!
• Even where GLAIVE Mini doesn’t address all the questions to be found in GURPS’ weapon table stats, it does offer a few tools for standardizing things a bit. These include suggestions for handling stat oddities in flails and 1-hnd bastard swords, and the Semibalanced option for reworking other designs that seem a bit out of place.
• As noted earlier, while GURPS does a pretty good job of balancing its myriad weapons in terms of their merits and demerits, a few stand out as perhaps over- or under-powered. GLAIVE-based recreations of the weapons may yield improvements. 

So. If this sort of thing interests you, give GLAIVE Mini a shot!

GLAIVE Mini needs your help!

No amount of time and testing reveal every flaw. Do you spot any design mistakes in GLAIVE Mini? 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 see a Mini armory here! 

Thank you. Now go treat your mightiest-thewed character to a real barbarian’s axe.

Downloads

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History

v2.3 2019-04-16: Cosmetic update: A few tiny tweaks, plus alphabetical ordering of the Modifier Table.

v2.2 2019-02-25: Cosmetic update: no new content, but the reading experience should be better.

v2.1 2018/06/06: Tweaked some wording and fixed a typo. Not worth applying a new version number.

v2.1 2018/02/19: Fixed a couple of typos.

v2.0 2016/03/29: Modest-sized upgrade, with: notes addressing new weapon stats and options in GURPS Low-Tech; a new mod (Poor Stabber); revised and clarified explanation of GURPS‘ two-handed and unbalanced weapon rules; and overall clean-up and improved organization. See announcement of upgrade, with more detailed notes on making good use of GLAIVE Mini. 

v1.1 2012/08/22: Minor clean-up, plus a change to skills for semibalanced weapons. The old rule specified the use of unbalanced weapon skills, or balanced skills at a -2 default. The new rule suggests either balanced or unbalanced skill as the natural skill (designer choice), with the other at a -2 default, depending on which is more natural for the weapon. Thus, a semibalanced weapon could be specified as using Axe/Mace or Broadsword skill normally, and the other at the -2 default, depending on whether it handled more like an axe or a sword. This change gives more freedom to the designer. 

v1.0 2010/08/16.