Cost: [-10]
Horizontal is found on B139. It is an exotic physical Disadvantage where you have a horizontal posture like a dog or cat. You can stand on your hind legs for short time but find this very uncomfortable.
Basic[]
- B19 "length for horizontal creatures such as cats and dragons"
- B385
- "A human-sized fighter who is lying down or who has the Horizontal disadvantage occupies two hexes"
- "If a human-sized fighter lies prone or has the Horizontal disadvantage, he takes up two hexes."
- B389 "A fighter with a Size Modifier 2 or more greater than yours (3 or more if he’s kneeling or has the Horizontal disadvantage, 4 or more if he’s prone) completely blocks your line of sight –"
- B398 "Humans normally fly in a horizontal position
(so that they can watch the ground and see where they’re going); treat them as two-hex figures when using the Tactical Combat rules."
Martial[]
GURPS Martial Arts 115 adds "Your joints bend the wrong way for":
This has the effect of forbidding many of the new techniques for quadriped animals, as it would be difficult to envision them using them with their Brawling or Wrestling skills.
Flying Tackle is also forbidden (probably assumes a standing posture), so to do something similar (actually better) requires Extra Legs to do Pounce instead.
The lesser version of Semi-Upright is not addressed, so presumably any animal with that (like apes) could do all of these MA techs.
New techniques NOT mentioned here (which presumably still apply) which might be interesting to see animals do:
- Head Butt (actually gets a damage bonus)
- Stamp Kick (explicitly called out, and a good alternative to Knee Strike for doing a Kick Attack without falling down. Plus it would not be subject to the -1 damage penalty when not using Back Kick.
Punch note: basic set's quadriped metatrait (and also the TG44 "Animal Styles") uses No Fine Manipulators -30 (which is effective One Hand aka Missing Hand -15 twice) to represent removing arms, which should actually be worse than NFM (-40) but not as bad as No Manipulators (-50) which removes legs too.
This is a loss: handless arms can punch (elbow) and parry, and even be walked upon! TG44's "Bear" for example is Semi-Upright and lacks "Extra Legs".
This lack of arms presumably means "no punching for quadripeds" with using forepaws counting as "kicking" and "grappling using legs" (-2 to DX).
This would also mean that animals would use Push Kick instead of Shove.
Technical grappling note on posture[]
TG10 (left) "Crawling: At the grappler’s option, crawling may be either a half- or full-height horizontal posture."
- TG9 explains height to mean "in case questions arise as to whether a hit location is within reach"
- it further notes "Horizontal postures that are “full height” are stretched out lengthwise on the ground"
TG10 (right) "Horizontal creatures can move between sitting and crawling easily by lifting off of their haunches. Transitions between them should use the guidelines that bipedal creatures use to move from standing to crouching."
TG31 "Your default posture is considered crawling, a three-point, full-height posture."
- this means occupying two hexes, but "default" probably does not forbid moving into a "half-height" posture as a free action per TG10
TG35 "If you are horizontal, you rotate yourself in place by shifting the body parts not in close combat, at -2 per hex moved"
- in a half-height posture you presumably occupy just 1 hex (scrunched up, like a sitting human, unlike a standing human who occupies 2 "vertical hexes") meaning there would be no "hex moved" penalty for rotation added to the usual -2 per hex of rotation (ignoring the usual sum -4).
The half-"height" (length) advantage (easier rotation) is offset by sometimes being easier to target (all of you is in reach) but that too if offset by having more targeting options (all of you CAN reach)
See also[]
- Semi-Upright worth -5
- Restricted Manipulators worth -15