C31R07 (AKA the Killbot Turned Budhist) as a Pilot rather than a War Machine

One of the favorite Iconic characters in the back of the Gurps:Characters book is C31R07, a high tech robot programmed for war that discovered a noble streak and ran away to join a Buddhist monastery. His story is fun, his character engaging, and his point cost prohibitive. His point cost is described as 'Godlike'. C31 is tough, but he isn't godlike.

I think this is because he's using points in a setting where everyone else uses gear. His highest point advantages aren't those that define who he is or his skills, they're just his gear. I'm fond of building characters with gear rather than points, so I'm going to convert him.

If you just want to see the result, skip to here. This article is about the process and the why I made the changes I did.


As for why I'm revisiting an official iconic character,  I merely say that we're learned a lot about the way Gurps 4e works in the decade since it was published, and if you quit trying to improve you quit living. I hope you find this exercise interesting, but more importantly, enabling.

So what does C31 the pilot look like?

Here we're going to drop the part where he is permanently bonded to a hummer and just consider what he looks like without it.

The only real change on his attributes is we're changing his ST and HP to 10. That's just the simplest and possibly the fairest way to do things. He arguably needs something to translate his DX over to his 'piloting', but we'll worry about that later.

His advantages I'm going to intentionally go heavy on removing. AI and Machine are essentially parts of who is is, so I leave them, as well as combat reflexes, true faith, and his background advantages. his extra attack and tracking are character oriented as well: no TL8 technology gives you the ability to attack twice. Tracking multiple targets maybe but probably not.

We're going to drop dead broke because the little robot really isn't dead broke. It has a job and a patron. If it needs something it can get it. It also has a lot of gear and an expensive diet. Its a good thought, but all of the limits are probably really covered in Disciplines of Faith (Asceticism).

Conversely, his disadvantages from being a machine are mostly fairly legitimate. His mind and body really are electrical, he really is numb, and the fissionables are a royal pain to carry around. Fragile is dropped, because its HP related and we're really attributing the HP to the vehicle, and he doesn't roll every time he takes 5 points of damage.

There is also a nasty set of disadvantages not shown here: he can't pass as human. And in Infinite worlds thats important. He has somewhere between social stigma (monster) and social stigma (valuable property) on almost all worlds. Lets confine ourselves to just pruning for the moment though.

I'm not going to touch his skills -- those are properly his. I will be adding skills to reflect some of his advantages later on though -- skills like radio operation.

So here is our little pilot. Think of this as though he'd been wrecked and just his core and his 'hands' had been rescued:

ST 10    HP 10
DX 15    Per 18
IQ 16    Will 16
HT 15    FP NA

basic speed 8.00

Disadvantages:
Electrical [-20]
Numb [-20]
Restricted Diet (Fissionables) [-30]
Clueless [-10]
Disciplines of Faith (Asceticism) [-10]
Low Empathy [-20]
Pacifism (Cannot Harm Innocents) [-10]
Truthfulness (6) [-10]
cannot float, broad minded, always searches for new mantras  and new challenges, humble [-5]

Advantages:
AI [42]
Combat Reflexes [15]
True faith [15]
Machine [25]
High TL 1 [5]
Extra Attack [25]
Tracking [5]Languages (Greek, English, Tibetan, Machine) [16]
Cultural Familiarity (Homeline, Hegomony) [1]

Right now he's 364 points -- he drops below everyone but the vampire baron in point cost! he's also dropped three quarters of his own points.He is still a monster of a character though. And we're not done yet! we still have to add back his built-in war machine!

What is the Chassis?

Lets start by comparing him with a tank (I'm using the T72). The tank has 5 times higher strength, seven times the DR for most shots and roughly equal DR on the tanks 'weak spot' of an underbelly. C31 has a slightly stronger machine gun (mostly due to being armor piercing). The main armament on the tank makes a joke of  the plasma attack though: the tank gun is designed to cut right through 1000+ DR.  C31 is faster than the tank: the absolute speeds are similar, but C31 accelerates much faster. Oh, and it has a dodge score. the handling on C31 is essentially 3, while on the tank its -3.  So we may not be comparing apples to apples.

So lets use a HMMWV (otherwise known as a hummer) instead. The OHE M1114 to be precise. C31
outperforms the hummer in every combat metric but HP but fails on every vehicle metric. Its close though: the machine gun is better mostly because of armor piercing. The DR scores are within 20% of each other if you don't count being hardened. Handling for C31 is of course much better, (though not nearly as bad as the tank), and it accelerates faster, but the hummer has a higher top speed, and is stronger. C31 is also more coordinated than the hummer, requiring only one pilot, but he already has the extra attack advantage, and maneuvers line up fairly well, all things considered. So combat wise he has a really nice and advanced HMV.

The hummer we compared him with was inferior in most ways and cost $100,000. And it used TL8 technology. But is the inferiority due to an inferior product, or is it due to being TL 8 vs. TL 9? I think its a little of both. I'm going to say the chassis is worth $200,000 in TL 9, and thus $400,000 in the IW campaign!

There are a couple of different approaches we can use to price the 'gear'. The simplest is signature gear. Each point of signature gear gives $10,000. So pricing him that way gives us [40]. That's probably not a bad point cost, but lets fiddle some more.

Via the rules in 'The Captain's Boat' the war machine is a 3 point patron (20 times starting wealth) that always appears (x4). That's 12 points -- really cheap! But it may be more appropriate to use the 'fighter and mecha' rules shown there. In fact, it almost surely is. These rules don't use the vehicles point cost: they compare it to a similar vehicle. The chassis is almost surely +100% or more of the standard vehicle, for a base of 15 points. The chassis is in every adventure, but that's because he's welded to it. Its not always useful. 15 or less is probably more appropriate than a true always. which gives us 45 points. That's really close to where we were before, and probably a 'fair' outcome.

I'm going to favor the Ally method, but if you only have basic, signature gear will give you almost as good results -- you just have to trust my ball-parking of the chassis cost.

Wiring the Pilot In

We're not done yet! when he had his chassis as advantages, C31 didn't need a driving skill. He didn't need a radio skill. And he used innate attack instead of guns. Oh, and his brawling skill needs to be changed. There is also the matter of adding the disadvantages reflecting that he's not treated as human by others and he can't pass as human.

C31 should have fantastic driving skill. Getting it to match his dodge sounds like a good starting point. giving him the optional specialty of only driving himself also sounds right -- that drops his driving score to easy. We could alternatively give him the equipment bond  with his chassis. I'm going to forgo that option. He only needs 2 points to match his dodge. The driving skill controls his dodging, and caps his DX-based skills. It can also substitute for DX on occasion.

He had a pile of radar and radio advantages. He needs electronics operation (comm), electronics operation (sensors), and electronics operation (Electronic warfare). We don't want to really change is abilities, so we'll purchase all of those at the 2 point level: equal to his IQ score of 16.

His combat advantages mostly need to be renamed. Innate attack becomes guns (machine gun) and beam weapons (projector). Brawling is harder. In the end I'm going to keep it. I suspect it'd be fairer to price it as an average skill rather than easy or to make it a technique of driving(mecha), but this is a minor issue.

C31 can't pass for a human. While this won't bother his comrades, it will frequently get in the way of adventures, which for ISWAT mostly happen on worlds where you are somewhere between a monster and a treasure. I'm going to add social stigma: valuable property, as its somewhere between the monster reaction and the worlds were he can walk around freely.

The result can be found here:

Analysis:

Now he's 412 points. He's at the upper end of the iconic characters, but doesn't stick out like a sore thumb like he used to. He's paid a lot of points for his war machine, but he's ceased to be a war machine with a few doodads attached. A few things now stand out:

• He's still got the highest base stats of anyone -- sky high IQ, DX, and HT.
• He's got a pretty thin skill list. We've lengthened it, but He's very focused on war and fixing himself. 
• He doesn't have the legal enforcement powers/ Duty all his ISWAT buddies have.

We could probably make a lesser version of him. We may even be able to use tale
nts and keep him at the same level in several key areas. He'd be a little less epic in that case, but right now his biggest cost is actually having three primary attributes at 15+.

Lets stand back consider if we've done something we shouldn't have. C31 is better in combat than any of his comrades -- he brings a TL9 war machine to the table. Its not a tank, but its capable of rolling over almost any opposition mounted on foot. But is he overpowered? If I was an evil mastermind bent on world domination would I rather have him or the Baron after me? Frankly, the baron is a little scary. C31 is better in the wilderness and in places without limits on violence or passing for human, but he quickly runs into barriers anywhere else. And I can counter him with a tank. Countering the baron takes more skill.

Is he more dangerous than an Monster Hunters witch? what about the commando or the techie? I think we have his point cost in the right ball park.

I hope this showed some things about how to build a character with points and how to do it with gear. Part of me hopes someone will use him in a game when they thought they never would be able to. Have fun building your gurps characters!

The pictures of C31 were taken from Gurps PDFs, and are used under the fair use policy of Steve Jackson games. As is the character. Needless to say, I recommend purchasing their stuff! Its awesome!