A few years back I made a post about merging armed combat skills in GURPS. Much more recently I made another one about merging unarmed combat skills. That one sat on my drafts folder for a long time, but I finally decided to publish it as it was.

If you’re following my Hell’s Rebels Solo Campaign reports, you might have noticed I’m not using either of these house rules in the game. That’s because I started out using GURPS Character Sheet to make my PCs and I found that program to not be very receptive to house rules that aren’t already coded in.

But if I was going to use these rules, how would they have changed my PCs? Let’s take a look at the starter version of their charater sheets and try to figure out the changes.

Rosalia Savory, the Mysterious Satirist

Rosalia basically doesn’t change. Saber becomes Fencing at the same level, and she can use other fencing weapons if needed. She has no other physical combat skills, so we’re done here.

Her new skill line would then be:

  • Fencing (A) DX+2 {8} - 15

Jania Moonshadow, The Phantom Thief

Jania is in the exact same situation. Her Smallsword becomes Fencing, and her possible weapon selection broadens a little, and that’s it.

Her new skill is:

  • Fencing (A) DX+3 {12} - 17

Urist Stortebeker, The Last Archivist

Urist enjoys the benefits of the new Axe/Mace skill, so he would be able to use flails with that same skill at a small penalty, but his character sheet would not even need to change since the new skill has the same name. However, this would definitely make me buy him a flail and the associated technique as soon as I could, as the benefits over a standard mace are clear.

Jade Irinka, the Sixth Raven

Jade has a “sword and pistol” kind of build but her focus is indubitably on the sword, with a very high Saber skill. She also has minimal training in Wrestling for emergencies. This is a typical DF Swashbuckler setup - she’s deadly when using her chosen weapon, and her greatest weakness is losing that weapon.

As a result, she’s one of the characters who changes the least. Her Saber skill becomes Fencing, her Wrestling becomes Grappling, and there is zero need to shuffle points around as she still needs the Weapon Adaptation perk to use a backsword with Fencing.

She does gain a few advantages with the skill merge, though. She can now pick up an fencing weapon and be effective with it even if her Weapon Master doesn’t apply to the weapon. And she gains access to Judo parries when unarmed, or with an empty off-hand.

Her new skills are:

  • Fencing (A) DX+5 {20} - 20
  • Grappling (A) DX-1 {1} - 14

Arcturus Pankrator, the Knight of the Deep

Our pal Art changes the most! He has Judo, Karate, Wrestling and Knife, all of which were deeply affected by our house rules. We’re going to have to do some point shuffling.

Wrestling and Judo merge into Grappling, which is DX/Average. We could lump their points together and give Art Grappling-21, but I think 20 is good enough as a starting skill level. So we get 4 free points here, and Art gets excellent Judo parries and throws from his new skill in addition to everything he could already do with it.

Knife becomes… Knife. It’s the new and improved DX/Average version, which means his skill level goes down to 15. He does gain access to those sweet Main-Gauche fencing parries though.

Karate becomes Unarmed Striking, which is DX/Average wth pretty much the same capabilities. I notice the points spent in his original post are wrong, though. He should have either Karate-13 or have spent 2 points on it. But hey, once we replace it with Unarmed Striking the level and cose become correct!

What to do with those 4 points we freed up? How about we put 2 points in Knife to bring it up to its former level of 16, 1 in Unarmed Striking to bring it up to 15, and 1 in Swimming so we don’t have any “hanging” points in the starter character sheet?

Note that increasing Unarmed Striking here doesn’t give him increased damage just yet, as the new breakpoints are DX+1 and DX+2.

So his new skills become:

  • Grappling (A) DX+5 {20} - 20
  • Knife (A) DX+1 {4} - 16
  • Unarmed Striking (A) DX {2} - 15

Conclusion

Arcturus would definitely benefit the most from this merge, though all of the others would also get some benefit in the form of slightly increased capabilities. I’m tempted to eventually enact this change in the game, if I can find a way to program them into CGS.