Abilities, given a short introduction in GURPS Basic Set and expanded upon greatly in GURPS Powers, are a godsend for people who like to cut corners on the length of their stat blocks and character sheets. Sure, you could have a few dozen demonic critters with “Burning Attack 1d (Aura, +80%; incendiary, +10%; melee attack, reach C, -30%; severe pain, +40%) [10]” on their Advantages list…or you could just write it once in an introductory bit, name it something like “Hellfire Aura” or the like, and then just have “Hellfire Aura [10]” written on each of those demons’ stat blocks instead.

As I noted, GURPS Powers does a lot of legwork for the ability-conscious GM or player already. It’s got a load of superpowered attacks, inbuilt firearms, supernatural powers, and even some go-to generic venoms and poisons. What it doesn’t have, though, are any worked examples of the Striker advantage set as horns, tails, and the like. I assume it’s because Striker is a vastly less complicated advantage to work with than, say, Affliction, but the absence nonetheless sparked an idea in my head that ended up leading to the original bare-bones draft of this post. What started with strikers eventually expanded into other abilities based on animal body features, all of which I’ve revised and gathered up here for this post. If you like them, feel free to use them as-is or as a jumping off point for what you feel would be better suited for your own purposes.

Each entry is split into the statistics of the ability, the real world basis, and possible variants. Note that the listed name for variants are noted in parentheses in future stat blocks I create using them; for instance, a creature with the Horns ability that has both the Frail and Long variant additions would have its ability listed as “Horns (Long and Frail)” in its stat block.