Racial Template: Avian

Finding a decent example was
unusually difficult.

The other half of what was promised, an avian template. There aren't as many good models for an avian racial template in GURPS (that I can find) as there are for Bunny-Folk to rip off borrow from for designing this template, so a lot of it is pretty unique, but I can still try to fish for support somewhere, and maybe try being creative for a change!

Inspirations

So for me, I actually don't know a lot about classic fantasy fixtures and tropes for birdmen. I looked up a bit on TVTropes, and pieced together the little bit I do know about them from what I've seen, and come up with this list of bird traits that might be iconic of bird races.

• Winged Flight (Duh?)
• Voice, being as birds can sing, and several are especially good at mimicry
• Hollow bones (Crushing damage vulnerability?)
• Great eyesight
• Obsessions with shiny objects (I think this is more of a crow thing?)
• Memory problems

So, that's some pretty good fodder to work with, additionally, Alternate Dungeons II, as alluded to in the previous post does have a Tengu racial template, but tengu aren't necessarily avian, though most have wings, and even a small association with crows, plus that template has a lot of the spiritual components associated with tengu as well, so not a 1:1 fit, but some of the mechanical pieces can be reused.

Putting It Together

So here's a look at constructing a Racial Template with a budget of 50 points, and a goal of coming to a number evenly divisible by 5.

Avian	40 points
Attribute Modifiers:  HT+1[10].
Advantages:  Acute Vision 2 [4]; Flight(Slow, Air Move equals Basic Speed, -25%; Winged, -25%)[20], Mimicry[10], Teeth(Sharp Beak) [1], Voice[10].
Disadvantages:  Vulnerability (Crushing Attacks x 1.5)[-15]. Features: Feathers Avian Power-Ups Avians can buy the following racial power-ups: Damage Resistance 1 or 2 (Tough Skin, -40%) [3] or [6] due to feathers Normal Flight Speed[10] This is removing the Slow limitation from the Flight advantage, allowing an avian to travel at double ground move in the air. Alternatively, or in addition, Enhanced Move (Air) 1 [20] can double your movement speed as well, although it costs more.  Up to 5 levels of Telescopic vision [5/level] Other Thoughts You could probably come up with a lot more specific sub-lenses if you wanted to focus on avian people based on a particular type of bird (Raptor Avians are good at hunting and seeing; Song Bird Avians have good musical and vocal capabilities; Owl Avians can rotate their head in all directions and see well in the dark; Corvid Avians have incredible social intelligence and can suss out motives and have vast social networks) but I went with a very wide brush. I'd say if there was a more "fundamental" template, it'd probably be only the beak, winged flight, and vulnerability, making it 6 points, but that by itself does not have enough personality I think.