GURPS 101: How to end a fight

Death needs not to (always) be the end! 

When it comes to injuries and "combat end-state" GURPS has a few differences from the behemoth in the RPG room. Part is mechanically related (extensive use of negative HP, more than one way to disable a combatant) and part is genre related: hack n' slash fantasy RPG usually has combat ending with the death of the enemies. 

But while GURPS also excels at that (Dungeon Fantasy and Dungeon Fantasy RPG!), it can be used for many other genres, and death as a a way of ending combat may not fit in all cases - and there's little guidance regarding the issue on the Basic Set. Let's take a look at the bits and bolts and see what we can come up with.

In GURPS 101 I try to explain general GURPS concepts, hopefully clearing confusion along the way.

Credit where is due, there is some guidance in the DF and DFRPG lines, along the lines of classifying enemies as "fodder", "worthy" and "boss" (I think). 

Combat may end with incapacitation or surrender - the latter usually overlooked when playing. I'll try to describe what sort of injuries could result in one or the other. We'll mainly reference chapter 14 of the Basic Set.

You don't need to wait for death in order to stop combat. So what might be some good stopping points to apply either surrender or incapacitation?

• Any injury: surrender (GM's call). Some enemies really don't put up a fight. For them, any injury, even a scratch, causes them to surrender, flee, etc. This is equivalent to the "fodder" classification in DF. 

• 

  "I yield!"

  A major wound: surrender (GM's call), knockdown and stun (GM's call), or unconsciousness. A major wound requires a check for knockdown and stun, which if failed by 5 or more results in unconsciousness, this ends the fight for this participant! Alternatively, being knockdown and stunned might be the trigger for surrendering, or merely suffering a major wound might do it. 
• Less than 1/3 HP left: surrender (GM's call). Suffering that many injuries might be enough to squash any sane person's will to fight. Self preservation kicks in, and the foe surrenders - or tries to flee, at half move...
• 0 HP: surrender (GM's call) or unconsciousness. For the GM's call, same as above. Rules related, anyone reaching 0 HP is at risk of falling unconscious each turn they act, and then combat is over.
• -1xHP to -5xHP: surrender (GM's call), unconsciousness or death. For the GM's call, same as less than 1/3 HP. Rules related, anyone who falls unconsciousness or dies is well out of the fight.

Conditional Injury Hack

Conditional Injury and my take on it lend themselves very well for this concept. Recapitulating the wounds levels I settled on: 

• Scratch wound (injury of >1/10 HP)
• Minor wound (>1/4 HP)
• Serious wound (>1/3 HP)
• Major wound (>1/2 HP)
• Reeling wound (>1.6 HP)
• Grievous wound (HP)
• Deadly wounds 1 to 4 (1 to 4xHP) and
• Fatal wounds (5xHP)

So for a friendly 11 HP orc, those wound levels would be like this:

    

Any of these wound levels might be the trigger for surrender! The GM might decide that coward creatures surrender at a Scratch or Minor wound, "regular" ones at a Major Wound, or creatures with no regard for self preservation to require a Deadly wound - that's is to say, again, for surrendering. They might just as well be disabled earlier courtesy of failed HT checks. 

Perhaps regular orcs surrender at a Major Wound, and an Orc Captain at a Grievous Wound. Perhaps when in the presence of the evil Necrolich they fight to the death.

Cooling the dice

Another rules related way of ending a fight before death is using Morale Checks (B561). It involves rolling a morale check - essentially a reaction roll with different modifiers - and looking up whether the enemies try to flee or surrender. The trigger for that is "when the NPCs are losing a fight", which is to say that the GM decides when. The advantage to this is that the results affects the whole group!

So there we have it. The gist of it: you don't need to be dead to stop fighting. 

Cheers.