Realism and Game Balance

How GURPS Works: Realism and Game Balance

Character design in GURPS is intended to give a balanced hero, someone whose strengths and weaknesses more or less cancel each other out.

In real life, of course, being super-strong doesn't necessarily mean you have to give up something else. And being weak in body doesn't mean you’ll automatically be good at something else. A totally realistic system would be one in which a character's strength (for instance) was determined randomly, with no relationship to his intelligence or social status...and so on for all his other capabilities. But random choices aren't really satisfactory for heroes. You might end up with a superman...or a weak, stupid, boring clod. You avoid people like that in real life; why would you want to become one, even for a minute, in a game?

In GURPS, two characters built on the same number of points start off "equal," but not the same. You can design the type of character you want while leaving room for growth and improvement.