GURPS: It's Not All Killing

What sets GURPS apart is the unparalleled freedom it offers, allowing me to fully immerse in character development and roleplaying, free from the constant pressure of combat. I can even choose to simplify the combat system with GURPS Lite, opening up a vast realm of possibilities for skill development, character design, and roleplaying, with minimal focus on combat character-building. This system is a true catalyst for creative exploration and empowerment.

5E does not do that. Every one of those classes is designed for killing and violent conflict. Even the "social builds" are still killers, often with mind-altering powers. Mages? Like a squadron of tactical bombers. Rogues? Backstabbing killers. Fighters? The obvious. Rangers? Killers with a bow.

I can do all those in GURPS; yes, that is true.

However, having characters built for social and skill roleplaying in 5E is almost impossible. Every character will get XP, and the system forces them to become combat demigods - whether they want to or not.

It forces every scenario down a violent path, and as my characters level, all I feel they are worth doing is killing things. They don't get more in-depth skills and social abilities, those hit points ratchet up, those combat options unlock, and the fun social and skill-based play fades away as ten damage per turn goes to thirty or more. I don't really see 5E characters as able to do much else than use violence as they grow in levels.

And 5E characters get boring since what I can do with them shrinks as they level. I had a party of 6th-level characters; they had loads of combat and damage options and nothing else. They had no interesting specialty skills, not many social abilities, no excellent technical knowledge, no lore, no charm, and no weaknesses, and they were all the same bland MMO characters who were a "hot bar" of abilities on rotation.

5E is still that tired 4E MMO design wrapped in a "classic D&D" wrapper instead of a card-game one.

But GURPS offers me more. It has a profound skill system for in-depth skill-based role-playing. There is also a Social Engineering PDF that gives you a wealth of social role-playing options and ideas. I can design a 500-point character without one combat skill. I don't need them. I can do a social, lore, or technical campaign without combat and have characters improve in ways meaningful to the plot.

But 5E is easier!

So what? If the characters feel one-dimensional and cardboard to me, easy means nothing. The same can be said of most of the OSR games, too. In those, "you get what you put into them," and a lot is left up to you, but I need something to work with! And they are still the class-based combat-focused killing games that their later descendants continued the legacy of.

I will put more work into a game where I get more out of it.

There is this line in my interests where if a game is too simple or too one-dimensional, I say "so what" and it gets put in a storage box.