GURPS resource: ST Monster Table

“They laughed at me in the Science Council!”
– attributed to Jor-El

What monstrosity lumbers forth? The ST Monster Table for GURPS! Why has it risen? None can say – or perhaps none dare. Born of a mad notion that the Damage Table and the Basic Lift and Encumbrance Table could be fused into a single heaving entity, this Qabalic construct reveals even damage scores expunged from the Damage Table. For while summoning new tables for STROLL of late, it was discerned that the stars are aligned and the portals are open; now is the time. The time for what? To create that hybrid beast of a table – and to cram it full of everything!

What lies within? Madness, that’s what! Damage, Basic Lift, encumbrance levels, key weights for strength-based feats of lifting and moving stuff, and one non-official, homemade thing: ST Roll, the score you really want to use in Contests and other ST-related rolls. (Read about that here.)

“Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”
– Dr. Ian Malcolm

What feeds its massive bulk? Spreadsheets! When technology puts such power within man’s grasp, the only ethical sin is to not delve too deeply! The numbers mystically fill themselves in – except those damage scores. (I had to extrapolate scores that the Damage Table skips; I can’t find official published numbers.)

Thank your cowering gods that the Table stops at ST 80. At ST 70, “add 1d to both thrust and swing damage per full 10 points of ST” kicks in on the Damage Table. With the progression revealed, GMs can freely extend the Table from ST 80 on up. (Again, I’m filling in missing numbers; if some resource shows how 1d is supposed to be split up over 10 levels of ST, tell me where it lies buried.)

“Listen, go ahead and laugh at my chicken soup. They laughed at Louis Pasteur, but he went right ahead and invented milk.”
– Buddy Sorrell

What is humankind to do with this abomination? I don’t know! Print it life-size, to paper over secret lair exits. Wrap (dire) fish. Line your owlbear cage. Transcribe it onto parchment of unhallowed leather and bury it under eldritch wards in the restricted collections at Miskatonic University. Flash it at non-GURPS gamers to scare them off the system – forever!

Or maybe even use it in games. It’s handy if you want a one-stop look-up for a bunch of ST-derived stats. The power-hungry may even be tempted to add character sheet spaces to hold those lifting-related numbers.

Dare we feed it more? Did I leave out any Table-ready feats of strength or key ST-derived stats? Could we – and should we – further sate the creature? Will the lurching advance of such mad GURPS science prove our savior? Or do we risk birthing a table so large it will destroy us all?


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4 Comments

  • fellrant

    “My god, it’s full of stats…”

    Well, okay, technically just a few actual stats. But the reference was on theme, right?

    Printing this now…

    • tbone

      Heh. The line I should have used.

      (BTW, this wasn’t planned, but the table prints out fairly nicely on A4. It won’t be as good a fit on that oddball paper size DFRPG uses, but my local office supply shop is always out of that size anyway. : )

  • Maximilian D Wilson

    RE: “Dare we feed it more? Did I leave out any Table-ready feats of strength or key ST-derived stats?”

    If you want a REALLY bloated table, add point costs for each level of ST, one column for each SM from -6 to +10. 😉

    • tbone

      Point cost is the thing I left out, simply because it’s just too simple to need a table. But… one is tempted, just to see whether that addition would push the table beyond the criticality threshold…

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