Your character will improve – or simply change – with time. The longer you play your character, the more opportunities you will have for such development.

After each game session, the GM will award you “bonus” character points – the same kind of points you used to create your character. You may spend these points immediately to improve your character, or you can save them. You can save unspent points for as long as you like, but you should ignore them when you add up your character’s point value. The following rules apply when you spend bonus character points:

• To add a new trait with a positive point cost, pay points equal to the trait’s usual point cost.

• To improve an existing trait that comes in levels, pay points equal to the difference in cost between the new level and the old level.

• To remove an existing trait with a negative point cost, pay points equal to the bonus originally earned when you took the trait. In all cases, increase the point value of your character by the number of points spent. Some additional rules apply to specific classes of traits.

For each level by which you wish to improve a basic attribute (ST, DX, IQ, or HT) or a secondary characteristic (HP, Will, Perception, FP, Basic Speed, or Basic Move), you must spend character points equal to the cost to raise that score by one level. If you improve an attribute, secondary characteristics and skills based on that attribute improve as well. For instance, if you raise your HT by one, you gain 1 FP and 0.25 point of Basic Speed (which might in turn increase Basic Move), and all your HT-based skills go up by one!

Increases in ST do not affect height (except for a child), but if you wish, you may gain additional weight to go with higher ST.

To improve social traits, you need an in-play justification in addition to the expenditure of sufficient points. Some examples:

Allies, Contacts, and Patrons: You must meet such NPCs during your adventures and earn their trust through your actions. You cannot hire true Allies, Contacts, or Patrons.

Clerical Investment, Legal Enforcement Powers, Rank, Security Clearance, Status, etc.: An individual in a position of relative authority must bestow such privileges. This might require a background check, qualification course, valor in combat, years of service, or a large bribe.

Reputation: You must earn this through deeds and works. You cannot buy a Reputation until you have done something to merit it!

Signature Gear: You must acquire a suitable item in the course of your adventures.

Tech Level: You can raise your personal TL (see Technology Level, p. 22) by living in a society of a higher TL than your own – but only if you are free to attend that society’s schools and benefit from its conveniences (being an alien abductee, prisoner, etc. doesn’t count). The GM should consider limiting improvement to one TL per year of game time.

Wealth: To improve your Wealth, you must amass money equal to the starting wealth of the desired wealth level after paying any necessary bribes, taxes, etc.

Most mental and physical advantages are inborn; you cannot buy them after character creation. However, there are some exceptions. You can learn some advantages as if they were skills; see Learnable Advantages (p. 294). If the GM feels that adventuring is as good as training to acquire such an advantage, you may buy it with bonus points. Other advantages require extraordinary circumstances: divine revelation, ritual ordeal, etc. This is typical of Magery, Power Investiture, and True Faith. In addition to points, these traits require the GM’s permission and suitable in-game events!

Of course, the GM can allow you to buy any advantage, if the results are in keeping with his vision of the game world. The GM may also challenge you to provide a good explanation (dramatic, logical, or both) for why he should let you buy a new advantage.

The GM may rule that you have suddenly acquired a new trait – most often an advantage or a disadvantage – as a consequence of events in the game: social interaction, combat, divine intervention, etc. This has nothing to do with bonus points! When you acquire an advantage this way, write it on your character sheet and increase your point total by the value of the advantage. You do not have to pay for it with bonus points. For instance, if the GM rewards you with a 10-point Patron after you save the life of a powerful duke, your point value goes up by 10 points and the game goes on. The GM may allow you to refuse such an advantage if your character could refuse it in the game world. You could refuse wealth, but if the gods granted you Magery, you wouldn’t have much say in the matter! If you refuse an advantage, you do not get equivalent bonus points to spend on other things.

Similarly, when you acquire a disadvantage this way, just write it down and lower your point value accordingly. You do not get any extra points for it – that’s just the breaks of the game! For instance, if you lose an arm in battle, add One Arm [-20] and reduce your point value by 20 points; you do not get 20 points of new abilities to compensate. The GM may allow you to “buy off” a disadvantage acquired in play. Save up enough character points and then talk to the GM. If he is feeling merciful, he may arrange game-world events to eliminate the disadvantage.

You may trade bonus character points for money – see Trading Points for Money (p. 26). Each point is worth 10% of the campaign’s average starting wealth. The GM should provide a suitable explanation for your windfall: tax refund, buried treasure, gambling winnings, etc. Be creative. A spy under cover as an athlete might earn the money through product endorsements!

You can get rid of most beginning disadvantages by “buying them off” with character points equal to the bonus earned when you originally took the disadvantage. This generally requires a game-world justification in addition to the point expenditure.

Dependents: When you buy off Dependents, you or the GM should provide a game-world explanation of where they went – died, grew up, moved away, fell in love with someone else…

Enemies: If you wish to buy off Enemies, you must deal with them in the game world: kill them, jail them, bribe them, flee from them, make friends with them… whatever the GM deems necessary. You can never permanently dispose of Enemies unless you buy them off… they will return or new Enemies will appear in their place.

Mental Disadvantages and Odious Personal Habits: You may buy these off at their original bonus value. Assume that you simply got over your problem.

Physical Disadvantages: Your game world’s tech level – and the supernatural powers available – determine the degree to which you can buy off these traits. Consider Hard of Hearing. At TL5 or less, you would have to settle for an ear trumpet. At TL6-8, you could buy a hearing aid that would solve your problem while worn, allowing you to apply a Mitigator limitation (p. 112). At TL9+, surgery could fix the problem permanently. And in a fantasy world, the right wizard could cure you with a powerful Healing spell! The GM has the final say as to whether it is possible to remove a specific physical disadvantage… and if so, what the cost and time will be.

Social Stigma: You cannot get rid of this with points alone. You must either change your position in society or change your society. The GM will tell you when you have succeeded – at that time, you must pay enough points to buy off the original disadvantage.

You can use bonus character points to increase your skills and techniques. Each point is the equivalent of 200 hours of learning. This is not to say that you found time to hit the books during your adventures – only that the genuine experience of an adventure can be equivalent to a much longer period of study.

You can only spend character points to improve skills or techniques that, in the GM’s opinion, saw significant use in the adventure during which you earned the points. If the only thing you did on an adventure was trek through forests and slay monsters, you can only improve Hiking, Survival (Woodlands), and combat abilities.

When you improve a skill or a technique, the cost is the difference between the cost of the new level and the cost of your current level – see Improving Your Skills (p. 170).

You may only add a skill if you attempted a default roll (see Quick Learning Under Pressure) or if you spent most of the adventure around people who were constantly using the skill. For instance, a city boy on a forest trek with a group of skilled woodsmen could add Survival (Woodlands).

You may add a technique if, during the adventure, you made significant use of the skill to which it defaults. In all cases, the GM has the final say.

If you attempt a default skill roll in a stressful situation, you may try to acquire that skill during play, regardless of whether you succeeded or failed (you can learn from your mistakes!). The GM is the judge of whether a given situation qualifies as “stressful”; see Base Skill vs. Effective Skill (p. 171) for examples. At the start of the next game session, make an IQ roll to see whether you learned from your experience. Eidetic Memory gives +5; Photographic Memory gives +10! On a success, you may spend one point earned during the previous session to learn the skill. If you have no points, you cannot learn the skill – and if you let more than one session go by, you lose the opportunity. Obviously, if a skill has no default, you cannot learn it this way.

Adventurers can, and probably should, get jobs. This lets them earn money and practice their skills. Most jobs have prerequisite skills; some have other requirements (minimum attribute levels, advantages, etc.). In general, more accomplished characters can get better jobs and earn more money. For more information, see Jobs (p. 516).

You may add or improve skills by spending time studying them, if an opportunity for study is available. In the discussion below, “skills” refers not only to ordinary skills, but also to spells, techniques, and even some advantages (see Learnable Advantages, p. 294).

Improvement through study does not depend on earning bonus points. You could build a character, keep track of his age and income, and let him study for 40 game-years without ever bringing him into play. Of course, this would not be much fun… and things that happen during play can offer great opportunities for study. If you aid a master wizard, his gratitude might take the form of magic lessons!

Normally, it takes 200 hours of learning to gain one point in a skill. You may study any number of skills at once, but a given hour of time counts toward study of only one subject, unless the GM allows an exception.

Some forms of study are more effective than others. This means that an hour of study does not always equal an hour of learning – there is a “conversion factor” between the two. Some guidelines appear below.

If you have a job, time spent on the job counts as “study” of the skills used in the job. However, since most time on the job is spent doing what you already know, not learning new things, every four hours on the job count as one hour of learning. You may claim a maximum of eight hours on the job per day (four hours per day at a part-time job). Your actual working hours may exceed this, but fatigue limits learning to this level. Thus, a year of full-time work will give you two to three points to spend on job-related skills.

You can teach yourself a skill, unless the skill description attaches specific conditions that would preclude this (such as “only taught by the military” or a prerequisite of Trained By A Master). Every two hours of reading, exercises, practice, etc. without an instructor count as one hour of learning. This must take place in time not used for adventuring, working, eating, sleeping, or taking care of personal hygiene. The GM should limit self-teaching to 12 hours per day – or eight hours/day for those with part-time jobs, or only four hours/day for those with full-time jobs.

Every hour of instruction by a professional teacher counts as one hour of learning. A “professional teacher” is someone with Teaching skill at 12 or higher. In order to teach you a given skill, he must either know that skill at your current skill level or better, or have as many or more points in the skill as you do. Ordinary instruction rarely exceeds eight hours per day. A college semester (21 weeks) of classroom study equals around one point per subject, and a full-time student could study up to five subjects per semester. A semester of night school would give one point in one subject.

Full-time study with expert teachers and lavish training materials is the most effective type of “normal” learning. An expert teacher has Teaching skill at 12 (or higher), plus a higher level and more points in the skill being taught than you do. Quadruple all costs and tuition fees! Every hour of intensive training counts as two hours of learning. Intensive training is rarely available outside the military, where you have little control over the skills taught or the scheduling of courses. It can last for up to 16 hours per day. You must have HT 12+ to make it through such training without “washing out” (the Fit advantage does increase effective HT for this purpose).

It is most efficient to learn new skills from a teacher. For some skills, finding a teacher is automatic; for others, it can be difficult. The GM should adjust availability to suit his concept of what is “reasonable.” Most education costs money. The price is up to the GM. If the teacher wants to be paid, see Jobs (p. 516) to determine what his time is worth. Multiply all fees by 4 for intensive training! Barter may be possible, or the teacher may demand a service in exchange for his aid – there are endless adventure possibilities here.

In a world where magic is common, you can learn a spell just as you would any other IQ-based skill. You may apprentice yourself to a wizard to learn his whole craft… or hire a magic instructor to teach you a few spells.

In a setting in which magic is secret or rare, finding an instructor is much harder. Most wizards shroud themselves in secrecy… or belong to reclusive, mysterious cults… or prove to be fakes!

You can learn magic without a teacher; use the rules described under Self-Teaching. You must be able to read and have access to good textbooks. Magical grimoires are often deliberately complex and obscure – especially in rare- or secret-magic settings! The GM is free to slow the pace of self-teaching as much as he wishes to reflect this.

To acquire Trained By A Master (p. 93) or Weapon Master (p. 99), you must first find an appropriate school or teacher – an adventure in itself, often involving a dangerous pilgrimage to an exotic locale. Once you locate a master, you disappear from play for 1d+1 game-years. After that, you might have to pass a series of hazardous tests, or make a final quest to yet another remote land. When you emerge from your training, you have the desired advantage, plus 20 character points to spend on any special skills allowed in the campaign.

The GM can treat these points like those gained from any other kind of study, or he can “balance” them with an equal number of points in additional disadvantages – perhaps an Enemy (e.g., a rival school), or a Duty or Sense of Duty to your school or teacher.

Adventuring time can also count as study of suitable skills. The “conversion factor” is up to the GM, who should be generous. For example, a trek through the Amazon might count for every waking moment – say, 16 hours a day – as study of Survival (Jungle).

Realistically, if you do not use a skill, you will forget it or your knowledge will grow obsolete. At the GM’s option, if you haven’t used or practiced a skill for at least six months, you must make an IQ roll to avoid skill degradation.

Modifiers: +5 for Eidetic Memory, or +10 for Photographic Memory; -2 if you learned the skill through intensive training (your training was good, but also brief).

On a failure, the skill drops by one level. The points spent on that level are gone, which lowers your point value. If a skill with only one point in it degrades, it drops to default level (that is, you are no better than someone without training) and cannot degrade further. If you go another six months without using the skill, roll again… and so on.

Extreme skill levels are even harder to maintain. Chess masters, star athletes, etc. spend a lot of time honing their “edge.” If you know a skill above attribute+10, you must make the above IQ roll every day you go without using the skill “in the field” or spending one hour in practice (this hour does not count as study). Once your skill drops to attribute+10, use the normal rules for skill degradation.

This rule is intended for harshly realistic campaigns, where verisimilitude justifies the extra bookkeeping. It is poorly suited to larger-than-life games where old soldiers come out of retirement to go on adventures and wizards live for centuries.

You can learn certain advantages as if they were skills (200 hours = 1 point), provided you have a suitable instructor (professor, kung fu master, etc.). Use the standard rules for skill learning; in particular, anyone teaching an advantage must possess it himself.

Combat Reflexes: The GM may rule that fighting is the only way to “learn” Combat Reflexes before TL7, and require adventurers who want this advantage to pay for it with bonus points. At TL7+, realistic military simulations can teach it as if it were a skill.

Cultural Familiarity and Languages: Time spent in a foreign land counts as four hours per day toward both Cultural Familiarity and the local Language, no matter what else you are doing (even studying skills – an exception to the “one skill at a time” rule).

Eidetic Memory: By apprenticing as a bard or doing daily mental exercises, you can “learn” the first level of this advantage. This requires an hour a day, meaning it takes a little less than three years of constant practice to gain this trait.

Enhanced Defenses: Only those with Trained By A Master or Weapon Master may “learn” these advantages. The GM should handle them as if they were martial-arts skills.

Fit: You can acquire either level of Fit through exercise – on your own or with a trainer – just as you would athletic skills like Hiking and Running.

G-Experience: The standard way to “learn” G-Experience is to visit planets that have different gravity fields. Highly advanced societies that can manipulate gravity might be able to teach this advantage as if it were a skill.

Psionic Abilities and Talents: In some game worlds, “psi academies” teach psionic Talents and abilities. The rules under Gaining New Psi Abilities (p. 255) apply to learning psi advantages as well as to buying them with earned points: you must possess Talent or abilities in a power to acquire new abilities, and you must have abilities to acquire Talent.

Trained By A Master and Weapon Master: See Finding a Teacher (p. 293).

Adventurers may encounter forces that can transform them in body or in mind. This kind of character development is significantly more complex than simply spending points or studying, and can raise difficult questions. The next few sections suggest answers.

“Body modification” is any artificial process that gives you a set of traits different from the ones you were born with (or created with), without moving your brain or mind to a new body. This most often means surgery, or biological or mechanical implants (often known as “biomods” and “cyberwear,” respectively), but permanent supernatural transformations also qualify. The GM determines what body modification can accomplish in his campaign.

Modifications acquired before your character entered the game cost points. Build your character normally and note which traits are due to artificial tinkering when you write your character story. This neither costs money nor affects the point cost of the traits – it merely justifies certain abilities on your character sheet (see Advantage Origins, p. 33).

Modifications added in play work differently. In theory, if you have the cash and can locate a suitably skilled surgeon, wizard, etc., you can buy modifications with money. In practice, this gives wealthy characters a significant edge, as they can effectively convert money into character points – often more points than they paid for their Wealth! The GM is the final judge of what is “fair” in his campaign, but here are a few suggestions:

Modifications cost points. You must have the requisite character points before you can add modifications. If you get a modification you cannot afford, the process fails and you do not gain the hoped-for abilities… or perhaps you gain them, but lose other abilities of equal value! The GM might opt to let you pay for your new abilities by going into “point debt”: any point cost in excess of what you can afford becomes negative unspent points, and until this debt is gone, all future bonus points must go toward paying it off. Cash costs are irrelevant (but one could see this as a special case of Trading Points for Money, p. 26). This option preserves game balance but isn’t very realistic.

Modifications cost money. If you have the cash, you can buy the modification. Pay the requisite amount of money and alter your point value to reflect the point cost of your new traits. This option is realistic but allows rapid character improvement. To keep this under control, the GM should ruthlessly enforce recovery times for surgery (see below), and have gruesome consequences for failed attempts at modification.

Modifications are free. If events in the campaign “inflict” modifications on you without giving you any say in the matter, you simply gain the relevant traits and adjust your point value accordingly – see Traits Gained in Play (p. 291). This option makes the most sense for involuntary modifications that give disadvantages, or for useful modifications that all the PCs receive from their employer or Patron (in which case the point cost is likely to be “balanced” by a significant Duty).

Surgery to install biomods or cyberwear, or for its own sake (e.g., cosmetic surgery to improve appearance), is not risk-free. Even if all goes well, you will need time to recover. It takes one day to recover per character point of traits added or removed via surgery. The Surgery roll is at -1 per full week of recovery required. On a critical success, halve recovery time. On a success, recovery time is normal. On a failure, the modification fails, recovery time is normal, and you suffer (recovery time in weeks)/2 dice of damage to the affected body part. Critical failure doubles this damage and results in complications – the GM is free to assign appropriate disadvantages.

If the GM is charging cash for modifications, assume that surgery costs $1,000 per character point of traits added or removed. Triple the recovery time and dollar cost for operations on the brain, eyes, or vital organs. Specific GURPS worldbooks might supersede some or all of these guidelines.

Divine will, magic, and so on may be able to produce permanent transformations. There is no recovery time, but if the GM is charging cash, this is usually very expensive – at least twice as expensive as surgery, in the form of wizard’s fees, temple donations, etc.

Magical wishes, divine inspiration, “neurotechnology,” etc. might be able to grant skills as well as advantages and disadvantages. As with other modifications, the GM may charge cash or points, or simply grant the skills. An amusing option is to balance the cost of such skills with mental disadvantages or quirks related to them.

Modular Abilities: If you bought the Modular Abilities advantage, you are capable of temporary “instant learning” – for instance, by loading a computer program or plugging in a chip. Use the rules under Modular Abilities (p. 71) instead of those above.

A hero in a fantasy or futuristic setting might find himself inhabiting a new body. There are many possibilities – brain transplants, digital “uploading,” the Possession advantage (p. 75), etc. – but they all use the same basic rules. When your mind moves to a new body, you gain that body’s ST, DX, and HT – as well as all secondary characteristics based on those attributes – and its physical advantages and disadvantages. Your IQ, Perception, Will, and mental advantages and disadvantages don’t change. Keep your points in skills, but base your skill levels on your new attributes. Recalculate your point value to take your new traits into account. For instance, if you switch from a body with ST 10, DX 10, HT 10, and One Arm [-20] to one with ST 12 [20], DX 12 [40], HT 12 [20], and two arms, your point value goes up by 100 points.

The GM decides how to handle changes in point value. The options given under Body Modification (above) apply here as well. In general, if you had no say in the transfer, the GM should simply adjust your point value. If you chose to inhabit a superior body, the GM may charge you points (the difference in point value between your new form and your old one) or money (especially if the new body is a golem, robot, etc. built for the purpose).

The rules above assume that a mind is unaffected by the brain in which it resides. This is fine for fantasy mind transfer – fantasy rarely concerns itself with the neurological origin of consciousness – but in a “hard science” setting, the GM should modify IQ, Will, and Perception by the difference in racial modifiers between the new body and the old one. Recalculate the point value to reflect such changes. For instance, if you belong to a race with IQ+1 and move to an animal body with racial IQ-5, your IQ will drop by 6, lowering your point value by 120 points. Realistically, DX also has a “learned” component – although it is likely smaller. The GM may decide that this rule applies to DX as well.

Certain techniques – such as “braintaping” (recording an image of your thoughts and personality) and cinematic cloning – may let you copy your mind into multiple bodies. If you make a copy of yourself in play, and intend to use it as a “backup” that will only enter play if you die, treat it as a suitably modified Extra Life (p. 55). The GM’s decisions regarding body modification determine whether you pay cash or points. Either way, you must update your backup regularly; otherwise, it will have outdated memories and skills – or its memories might fade to the point where it will not activate! If you paid cash, the GM is free to charge fees for updates, maintenance, and the security of your backup.

If you make copies of yourself and activate them while you are alive, you control only one character. The copies diverge into different people, which the GM controls as NPCs. They are not automatically your friends! The GM may permit you to buy copies as Allies (p. 36), at the usual point cost. But if you make copies indiscriminately, the GM might rule that some of them dislike you, becoming Enemies (p. 135) with the Evil Twin modifier.

If you have active copies, you may ask the GM to let you play one if you die. However, you will have to accept the GM’s decision on how your copy diverged from your original self. Your copy might have discovered his artistic side and let Guns skills degrade while he learned Dancing… and since he’s his own person, you must roleplay this, or the GM will penalize you for bad roleplaying. Such is the price of a free Extra Life!

Certain supernatural beings can infect you with their “curse” via a bite or other attack, turning you into a similar kind of being. In effect, you acquire a new racial template. If this is involuntary (and it usually is), apply the Traits Gained in Play rule (p. 291). Modify your character sheet to include your new racial traits, and adjust your point value as necessary. But if you willingly accept such a fate in order to acquire powerful new abilities, the GM should treat the transformation as he would any other body modification. To keep things fair, he should charge points. If you cannot afford the point cost, the GM may make up the difference by assigning you new disadvantages! Cursed (p. 129) is particularly likely…

For more information, see Dominance (p. 50) and Infectious Attack (p. 140).

In general, when your character dies, that’s the end of his career. You must create a new character to continue in the campaign. The GM might start you out close to the other PCs in points, but it is not acceptable to write a new name across the top of your old character sheet and declare, “This is his twin brother.” If you want to do that, buy an Extra Life!

In some settings, however, magic or high technology might be able to resurrect you. If so, you return from the dead and pick up where you left off. In other worlds, you might be able to become a being of pure thought (especially if you are a psi), return from the grave as undead (ghost, vampire, etc.), or even be reincarnated as an animal. The net effect is that you acquire a new racial template. The GM should handle this as explained under Mind Transfer (above): combine your mental traits with the physical traits of your new form, and adjust your point value. The point cost, if any, is the same as for a supernatural affliction – going from “living” to “dead” to “vampire” is really no different from going directly from “living” to “vampire.”

This is the end of the file.