How To Play LURPS, Lewis' Unified Role Playing System
How to play LURPS
Hi everyone, this is a special how to play episode of Firebreathing Kittens. I’m the game master for an upcoming session using the rules for LURPS, Lewis’ Unified Roleplaying System. This episode is a summary of what I learned after reading the rule book. Hopefully this will be a handy guide for how to play for my players, will help me organize myself, and will be useful for you listeners, too, who are looking to play your own LURPS game.
I’ll organize this how to play guide into sections.
1. Classless point-buy d6 game
2. Target numbers
3. Critical successes and failures
4. How to use a skill
5. How to attack
6. Armor
7. Distances
8. How to cast magic
9. Flaws
10. How to build a character
LURPS is a classless point buy system that uses only normal six sided dice. Classless means any character can learn any skill. Contrast that with a game where only rogues can learn how to pickpocket, or only clerics can learn how to heal, or only fighters can wield swords. Any LURPS character can wield any weapon and learn any skill. Point buy means you spend character points to buy and learn new weapons and skills. The more points you spend, the better you are at that activity. And lastly, LURPS uses only six sided dice, which I will also call d6 going forward.
You will determine your success or failure in LURPS by rolling six sided dice and counting how many of them meet or beat the difficulty. The standard difficulty check, also called a DC, is four. For a DC of 4, each dice you roll that lands on a one, a two, or a three, is a failure. Each dice that lands on a four, a five, or a six, is a success. Every weapon, spell, and skill that you use will have a target number. The target is how many individually passing dice you need to overall succeed at the thing you’re trying to do. For example if your target number is two, then you need at least two of the dice you roll to be a four or higher. The more dice you roll, the more likely you are to hit your target number. If you only rolled one dice, it would be impossible to achieve a target of two. If you were rolling two dice, then it’s possible for both of them to be a four or higher, and for you to be successful, but the odds aren’t great. The higher the target number is, the more dice you need to roll. The probability math is pretty straightforward because each dice you roll has a 50/50 chance to hit a 1, 2, or 3, compared to a 4, 5, or 6. So for each one target number, you’ll want to roll two dice, in general. Of course, the more dice you roll, the more likely you are to hit your target number. It’s reasonable to expect to hit a target number of two rolling four dice. It’s even more likely if you roll six dice. There are some in-game ways to change the difficulty number, for example lock picking tools make the lock picking DC 3 instead of 4.
Rolling a six or a one on the dice are special occurrences. Ones are special because they cannot be rerolled. When you roll a six, you can choose to reroll a failed dice. If you reroll a four and it becomes a six, that’s another chance to re roll one of your other dice. It can get very exciting. The more sixes you have, the better because if you roll more sixes than the target number, that is a critical success. A critical success in combat means you deal full damage. Here is an example. Your target number is two. You are rolling four dice. You roll a one, a two, a three, and a six. The one is a bit of a bummer, it cannot be rerolled. The two and the three are failures, but with your six, you can reroll one of them. So you choose to reroll the three. The dice with a three on it, when rolled again, becomes a six! That’s awesome. Now you have two successes, you meet your target number of two, and you’re going to succeed. You currently have the same number of sixes as your target number, and one reroll left. There’s a chance that you will roll a critical success. That second six entitled you to rerolling one more failed dice. You reroll that dice that had a two on it. It’s also a six, oh my goodness! Now, with three sixes, you have more sixes than your target number of two, so you critically succeed on your hit and deal full damage. Every damage dice your weapon deals is a six of damage. Yaaay. Do always keep in mind: if half of any dice pool you roll are ones, that is a critical failure.
