The Basics of Using GCS: Equipment

This is part 2 of my introductory series to utilizing the program GCS for creating GURPS Character Sheets. In it, I'll be covering the options for editing equipment to suit your needs.

Other Parts:
Part 1: Introductory Basics

Equipment:

Adding equipment to a sheet is the same as adding any other entry to your character sheet- either dragging the entry onto the sheet with the mouse, or hitting CTRL+SHIFT+C.

A bog standard edit equipment Window

The top half is the same for all equipment and encompasses the typical stats that would be applicable to equipment regardless of function- price, weight, quantity possessed, and so on. There are really four things to note about the top section:

1. The notes field will show up under the item in the character sheet view- useful for noting specific rules or bonuses the gear might give.
2. The Extended Value and Extended Weight fields will dynamically update with modifiers added through the modifier tab
3. The checkboxes for Equipped and Ignore for Skills will make the item count or not count against encumbrances. The equipped box will also clear any skill bonuses for equipment that give those if it is unchecked.
4. CTRL+UP and CTRL+DOWN will increment and decrement the uses of an item on the character sheet, making it easy to use the field to keep track of things like say, shots remaining for a gun.

The Melee Weapon and Ranged Weapon Tabs

Now let's break down the Weapons Tabs:

This first section is where you add the usage of attacks. Some weapons have different styles of attacks- such as stabbing with a sword instead of swinging it- and others have numerous types of ammunition that can be used (such as the Buckshot/Rifled Slug shown above). 

The red circle in the image above shows where the + and - buttons to add and remove a weapon usage are located. They do not render (but function) properly on some Windows computers, a known bug.

The second section deals exclusively with the damage line that will show up on your eventual sheet. Most of what is here is strictly what you see is what you get (WYSIWYG). All of the fields have helpful mouse-over text to denote what they are.

This last section hooks up the specific piece of gear to the skills on the character sheet, so that its specific entry in the weapons on your character sheet can be calculated correct. (Sharp-eyed readers might have noticed that I never did this for the Slug usage option, which is why it displays a level of 0 above.)

As shown above, you can specify way more than just 1 of these- allowing defaults to be handled pretty elegantly.

The first box (going left to right) is for the skill, and the second is for a specialization, if any. Both of these fields are case sensitive and won't work well with typos or misspellings.

The third box circled in red is the one you want to edit to emulate bonuses such as weapon bond that improve skill ONLY for that particular piece of gear. (EDIT: Turns out with a recent update the features tab now has a selection for "to this weapon" for Weapon Damage Bonus and Skill Level Bonus, which is awesome and makes the work-around above obsolete for some use cases.)

GCS will default to displaying the highest valid option on the final stats on the character sheet.

The fields for a melee weapon are very similar, but omit rate of fire, range, and such in favor of Reach, Parry Modifier, and Block Modifer fields. Again, most of the fields are WYSIWYG. 

Prerequisites:

This tab allows you to specify traits that are necessary to use the item. Without them, the item will show up in Red Text on the character sheet. This is normally more of a concern for checking for advantages or skills, but maybe your sword requires Magery or high IQ to wield or something. Fairly self-explanatory.

Features:

This tab allows you to attach bonuses and penalties of various types to the item, which will always be in effect as long as it's equipped. This is best suited to bonuses that are passive and constant, such as the DR afforded by wearing armor, or the Strength Bonus granted by wearing enchanted gauntlets.

Notably, the "Gives a weapon damage bonus of" field is where you'd want to look for setting up traits such as Weapon Master, Trained by a Master, and the damage bonuses afforded by Karate (although some skill entries also use this field, so make sure you're not double-dipping if you want to avoid GM ire.)

Modifiers

This is the latest addition to the equipment tabs, and it's a doozy for all of you who want a Bedazzled Light Halberd. Some of the options overlap with those in the Features tab- but modifiers allow you to affect the weight and value of the equipment at the same time, making it very flexible.

Take note of the Extended Value entries above- they differ quite a bit from the base Value and Weight!

The Basics of Using GCS

Someone on a Discord server I frequent was attempting to learn the ropes of GCS, and was unimpressed with the level of documentation available on how to actually utilize the program.

I've been using GCS for years as I've found it to be a very convenient and powerful tool for making character sheets. I consider myself a bit of a GCS power user, so here's the start of what may become a series of posts on the basics of using the program. (In fact, part 2 dealing with equipment is now up!)

When you first create a new character sheet, you'll be presented with a blank sheet filled with some pregenerated character fluff (Height, weight, eye color, etc), and baseline GURPS stats.

Click to Expand

Of note, the Master Library contains the bits and pieces you'll most likely want to add to a character sheet- advantages, disadvantages, and skills. The libraries for Basic Set Advantages and Basic Set Skills will likely be where you'll spend the majority of your time searching for what you want to add to your characters.

Most tabs will have a blank line at the top that functions as a search bar, as well as a drop-down that usually filters by categories.

I've typed warp into the Basic Set Advantages Library here

On a character sheet, blue text means that that field can be directly edited. The fields for your stats (ST, DX, IQ, etc) will decrement unspent points appropriately as they are increased. Additionally, GCS will update derived stats appropriately (increasing DX will increase related skills, and basic speed calculation, for instance).

Some traits have way more modifiers
than others...

To add something from a library to the character sheet, you can either drag and drop it onto the sheet, or hit CTRL+SHIFT+C. Depending on the trait being carried over, a dialog box might open with modifiers related to the trait- CR ratings for disadvantages, enhancements for advantages, etc.

To edit a trait in GCS, either double-click on it, or select it and hit enter.

For advantages and disadvantages, the top portion contains fields for how to price the trait, as well as fields that help with categorizing it.

The dialog window that opens will also usually include the following tabs for most traits, including equipment:

• Prerequisites- These will turn a trait red if your character fails to have the listed traits. (Example: Cinematic combat skills without Trained by a Master or Weapon Master.)
• Features- These are how you can tell GCS that an advantage should give a modifier to a character- such as voice improving reaction modifiers and giving bonuses to certain skills, combat reflexes increasing defense scores, or the damage increase Striking ST gives to attacks
• Modifiers- these are the limitations and enhancements present on numerous advantages and disadvantages
• Melee Weapon and Ranged Weapon- these tabs allow you to specify that an attack should appear on your character's sheet, and allow you to define the statistics of those attacks
• User description is a field that allows for entering notes.

Skills have largely the same dialog window, but have a tab for Skill Defaults, and the top portion has different fields specific to skills, which I'll drill down deeper into in a future post.

You Might be Doing it Wrong- Getting Weapon Bond to Work in GCS

So, you're using GCS to design a new character in with Signature Gear, or a tricked-out gun that you dropped some Character Points on to be able to purchase. Obviously you're going to slap on a Weapon Bond because that extra +1 to skill for the low cost of a Perk is bananas strong.

You go to the Power Ups library and pull the Weapon Bond advantage onto your sheet. But the Weapon Bond advantage doesn't have any features included that will make it add +1 to your appropriate skill, even after typing in what weapon it's for.

On this sheet I've added Weapon Bond, as well as two BSA Welrods. One is named Nancy, because that's going to be the gun that Reita finds especially well suited to her. With no further changes, GCS doesn't account for Weapon Bond, and both are at skill ten.

In the past, I would have dug around the Weapon Bond Advantage trying to add a feature that would bump Pistol Skill only while using Nancy, but this leads to problems:

1. The Feature "Gives a Skill Level Bonus" affects Character Skill- not effective skill using a weapon, meaning it will bump defaults, affect non-weapon bond weapons, and force you to remember to take -1 if you're using a weapon you're not bonded to.
2. Separating out a specific skill via skill specializations gets messy quickly.

The Right Way:

When you open up the dialog box to edit a weapon and click on the line that allows you to edit a weapon's attack, you want to edit the line that dictates which skill is used.

Change the +0 to +1, and click apply.

And looking back at the sheet, we can see that one Welrod is showing an increased skill level, while Guns Skill is still 10, and the other Welrod isn't bumped.

Added Bonus:

This is also the correct way of modeling Reflex Sights, Bonuses from Fine/Very Fine/Balanced equipment, and can also smooth over RoF calculations when using shotguns. If it affects the weapon and not the base skill, you likely want to add the bonus to the weapon, not via a feature which increases skill.

Equipment Bond:

This method breaks down when using equipment bond, things that affect Fast-Draw, etc. I'm still noodling on the best method of handling some of them.

GCS Tips: Making Templates

A user on the /r/gurps subreddit mentioned wanting a tutorial for making templates with GCS. Given that I've been using GCS for years and consider myself a power user, I figured I could lend a hand.

Self-Defense Template from GURPS Action 4: Specialists

First, create a new template.

You'll get a new blank template.

I've got it setup so that the Basic Set Advantages library and the Basic Set Skills library are open to the right. Having them side by side can minimize switching tabs.

As an example, I'm going to create the Parkour specialty package from GURPS Action 4: Specialists.

The parkour package is the following:

• Basic Move +1 [5]
• Compact Frame Perk
• Acrobatics, Climbing, Escape, Jumping, Running, and Urban Survival at various point totals
• Evade Technique
• A choice of Techniques

Begin by drag-and-dropping stuff onto the template, as if you were building a character. GCS handles stat boosts via an 'Increased X' advantage. Perks can now generally be found in the Advantages->Power ups library.

Before you ask, I've already reported the skill level error with Evade within GCS

Now for the 'select one/two/4 points of' sections in GURPS talents, you'll want to create a container.

A dialogue window will open up. I suggest naming it similarly to the directions on the template.

Then just drag and drop the options to choose from into the container. A little red line will indent when you're placing it into a container.

If the red arrow isn't indented to the right, you're not placing whatever you're dragging into a container

All done

Now the nice thing about templates is how easy it is to apply them to a character sheet.

Make sure the sheet you want to apply the template to is the last tab you've clicked on before clicking on the template tab. Notice how the Parkour template is highlighted yellow, while untitled sheet is colored grey.

Using the Apply Template to Character Sheet button will have you determine CR rating of advantages, type in specialties, and so on. To pick one from the container, I usually drag my choices out of the container and then delete the container, which will delete all remaining items inside the container.

As a note, making a template for a single character you intend to build is likely a waste of time. Now putting all of action 4's specialties into templates so I as a GM can someday send them to my players to use, that's much more efficient.