GURPS Supers - How to Brick

     In superhero setting parlance, a "brick" is a character who is designed to take a beating, often being described as "invulnerable", "nigh-invulnerable", or "able to withstand blows from" various sources.

The Man of Steel
The prototype "flying brick"

     One of the first actual bricks in the comics was Superman in Action Comics #1, described as "nothing short of a bursting shell could penetrate his skin".  This has waxed and waned over time; at the height of the silliness of the Silver Age, Superman could contain a nuclear explosion by literally sitting on it(!), while at the start of the Iron Age of Comics (sometimes called the Dark Age or Dork Age), Superman was killed by a creature designed specifically for the purpose of killing him (he got better...).  Generally, though, Superman is described as being nearly invulnerable to anything the bad guys can dish out, except when kryptonite, magic, and "red sun" radiation are involved, or (lately) when he's low on energy and blocked from recharging in sun.

     Other bricks in the comics are Ben Grimm/the Thing of The Fantastic Four fame, various battlesuit wearers (the Iron Monger suit developed by Obadiah Stane in the Iron Man comics), the Hulk, Thor, the Juggernaut, Giant Man, his DC/SuperFriends counterpart Apache Chief, and, though many people don't think of him this way, Aquaman.  All these characters are able to take a beating far beyond what their more human-durability cohorts can.

     MMO players may see a correlation between the MMO's concept of a "tank" and the superhero concept of a "brick".  Both are built to take a beating; the difference is that the brick is rarely designed to "grab and hold aggro" through a threat generation mechanic.  A brick will often be attacked first or hardest, but this is a general narrative idea, not a mechanical one.

     Bricks often but not always have superhuman strength as well.  This superhuman strength assists in enabling them to dish out damage while they take it.  Two bricks pounding on each other have been shown to demolish entire buildings!

Making a Brick

     The first thing to decide when making a brick is "how much damage should I be able to absorb?"  GURPS has two traits that are essential to making a brick: Damage Resistance (DR) and Injury Tolerance (Damage Reduction) (IT:DR).  Other possible Injury Tolerance traits - such as Homogeneous and Unbreakable Bones - can be used to make a brick, but they aren't essential to the concept.

It's clobbering time!

     Damage Resistance is the first trait to come to mind for making a brick.  Ben Grimm (pictured left) has Flexible and Cannot Wear Armor on his DR (supplemented with a Non-Protective Clothing Perk so he can wear pants), while Superman (above) has Tough Skin and No Signature on his DR (No Signature means his DR does not look like armor; and his is sometimes described as a Force Field, enabling him to take a bullet to the eye without blinking).

      How much DR is needed?  That depends on what you expect to run into.  Most police-issue pistols do 2d+2 to 3d damage, submachine guns and carbines can average 4d, assault rifles average 5d, and hunting and police sniper rifles can hit 7d.  Some anti-material rifles and heavy machine guns (such as the Barrett Light-50) can do 12d or 13d damage!  2d+2 damage is an average 9 damage, max 14;  3d is an average 11 damage, max 18; 4d is an average 14 damage, max 24; 5d is an average 18 damage, max 30; 6d is an average 21 damage, max 36; 7d is an average 25 damage, max 42; 12d is an average 42 damage, max 72.  If you have a setting where weapons routinely have armor divisors (the bad guys carry armor-piercing rounds, lasers, or blasters), it is often cheaper to put levels of Hardened on your DR than it is to multiply your DR by the standard armor divisor.

     So now we have our DR set against conventional firearms.  But what about those nasty 32d punches your fellow bricks and some super-strong scrappers can dish out (average 112 damage, max 192)?  If you're on a budget and can't afford that much DR, that's where IT:DR comes into play.

     Injury Tolerance (Damage Reduction) is applied after DR is subtracted from the damage and wounding modifiers from Injury Tolerance (Homogeneous), hit locations, and the damage type (commonly cutting, impaling, or the various piercing types) are taken into account.  IT:DR is a damage divisor, starting at "divide by 2" as the first level and going up from there in a 2-3-5-7-10-15-20-etc. manner.  This means that IT:DR /10 divides the injury taken from the attack by 10.  Damage after IT:DR is always rounded up, so that even if the damage is reduced to 0.01, it'll always round up to 1 damage taken.  This may seem counter-intuitive at first, but this can be used to explain how some brick type characters have bruises or are shown bleeding from the mouth or nose after taking a very solid hit.

     Let's consider a character with DR 45 and IT:DR /50.  He's attacked by a character who is doing 30d cutting damage, doing an average 105 damage.  That 105 damage is reduced by DR to 60 injury, then multiplied by 1.5 due to being cutting damage to 90.  After that, the damage taken is divided by 50, to 1.8 damage, rounded up to 2 injury taken.

Bricks and Superhuman Strength

     Many bricks are shown to have superhuman strength; in fact, superhuman strength and effective invulnerability go hand in hand.in the comics and many movies (think about how often the Hulk is actually injured).  Most bricks start their ST at 20 (due to mass alone, if following some form of the square-cube law for mass and size) and Super ST adds to that; a typical brick in GURPS has Super ST +12/+200 or better, though some get up to Super ST +15/+700.  If there's no point limit, some bricks can get up to ST +20/+5000 (think about how strong the Hulk or the Silver Age Superman can get, and you may realize that may actually not be enough strength for some of their feats!).  A D-scale or M-scale brick can be incredibly strong, and be just as invulnerable as their DR and IT:DR can also get in the thousands or even millions.

     Of course, there's healing to consider.  Many bricks - Superman, Hulk, and Thor, to name some notable ones - heal a lot faster from injury.  This is best represented by using Regeneration (Fast: 1 HP/minute) or faster; Hulk himself may top out at Regeneration (Extreme: 10 HP/second).  And since a superhuman brick will have 20-40 HP, the Regeneration is multiplied by 1/10 the HP value; 20 HP makes Regeneration (Regular) renew 2 HP/minute, not 1; 40 HP is 4 HP/minute.  Regeneration (Extreme) for HP 40 is 40 HP/sec, meaning that the damage taken is removed almost immediately.
     Many bricks also have levels of Super Throw, enabling several of them to use telephone poles as javelins ("Let me get this straight, Mr. Grimm: you threw a what through where to hit who?")  Bricks excel at melee, but their ranged ability is either really short-ranged (Superman's heat vision and cold breath) or throwing random objects to get their flying opponents on the ground.  Some (I'm looking at you, Hulk!) also have Super Jump, but in essence they're ground-based fighters.

     A brick's ST, Super ST, HP, DR, IT:DR, and Regeneration levels are limited by the point value of the game.  Because a brick's traits are not cheap and need to be taken in large levels, I tend to permit bricks to apply 50% more points than others in the game; for a high-powered (Justice League, Fantastic Four, original Avengers) 1000 point game, this means the brick is built on 1500 points; for a typical 500 point game (New Teen Titans, Young Justice, X-Men), the brick is built on 750 points, and for a street-level (Batman, Green Arrow) 250 point game, the brick is built on 375 points.  Of course, the lower levels limit just how effective the brick can be, but 375 points can produce a character that can shrug off police handguns with ease, while the 1500 point brick can withstand tank shells without flinching.

     A final thought: a brick is a simple yet relatively expensive superhero build.  They can be fun, but be aware of both their strengths and limitations.  Not every flying brick is Superman, and not every ground-based brick is the Hulk.  But when things need to be beaten up while taking very little damage yourself... it's clobbering time!