[Nymdok]

Originally Posted by Landwalker

Nymdok, in your calculations for the Spider Fight, did you take into account things like Shock?

Is it even possible to account for shock? Sure, somebody's going to be at (an average of) -3 to hit, but who? How does this affect expected damage output?

You can estimate how much shock is expected, but not how th eplayers react to it so whats the point?

For eample, for most of us, when we get hit, we'll take a round of All out Defense to help us shake off shock since it only lasts for a second anyway. Thats sort of a 'dead round' as the player doesnt attack so it wont hurt the spider, nor is the spider likely to hit him due to his Defense bonuses.

<Unrelated>
Is there a healing spell that negates shock for a limited time? Is there a healing spell that is cast with the speed of a blocking spelll that can negate shock? If not, i should think those would be useful spells and might merit threads fo their own.
</unrelated>

Originally Posted by Landwalker

Considering that the most likely characters to be taking damage (and thus, shock) initially are the fightery folks, would this have a significant impact on the expected damage output of the party?

How did you account for the fact that the mage can do 1d damage to multiple spiders in one turn?

How would things change if the Barbarian's dual-weapon attack targeted separate spiders (thus effectively causing more shock penalties amongst the spiders)?

Did you account for feverish defenses? Mighty blows? Flurries?

*Head explodes from variables*

Simply put, I didnt account for any of it. NOR SHOULD YOU.

Look you can run numbers till you get Arithme-toxemia (I term i just invented for math overload) and it wont tell you a damn thing. There are just too many variables to cover and even then, you cant predict fair dice. The more detail you attempt to factor for and the more assumptions you make, the model becomes more narrowly applicable.

I cant assume that EVERY GAME, EVERY GM, EVERY PLAYER, uses Extra effort....or spells....or ANYTHING. I simply cant becuase every GURPS game is different. what I CAN say is that all those using Extra Effort will spend at least 1 fp per turn, and therefore cant do it indefinately :)

So lets take them one by one and see what we're talking about.

No, I didnt account for the mages Exploding fireball. Although it can be frightfully effective against clustered enemies, its largely offset by its falling with distance. Especially if the spiders arge bigger than a Hex. Once the spiders close, thowing EF into melee encounters is likely to get backlash from other players :) Finally if the MAge throws them BEHIND the spiders, although a clever tactic, due to the fall off, they of course have to put much more energy into it.

No, I didnt account for Barbie attacking seperate targets.

If the barbie used his weapons against 2 differnt spiders then either

1. He's defenseless with his axes and wont last long
2. Unless he has ambidexterity hell be taking a -4 for the off hand (11 v 11 means 25% a HUGE reduction in his likely hood to hit.)
3. He uses rapid recovery for his axes andburns up FP fast.
4. Unless he has some advantage that lets him target multiple enemies, he's taking another -4. (so that makes it 7 v 11..less than 10%).

So heres the moral of the story:

These matrices assume that GURPS is Balanced as a System.

You can argue this all you want till your blue in the face. Magic, Powers, TBAM, Combat Reflexes, IQ! all come up from time to time as being unbalanced. In combat though, the things that you normally have access to generally have things that foil them.

That means there isnt a single 'I win always' spell, skill, technique, manuver or tactic. They all have counters. Explosive Fireball? Deflect Missle, Flurry of Blows? The Penalty and Feverish defense, AOA? AOD!

That means that, largely, the 'little variables' sort of have a way of sorting themselves out, its the big variables we gotta watch.


No amount of Arithmetic gets you a Crystal Ball. Only do what helps you see the most!

The Best you can do is look at how things are LIKELY to turn out, not based on your perceptions, but good old math.

You can plot expectations all day craft clever and robust models, but it wont help you set up encounters accurately because NO ONE can tell you what the dice will show on any given turn.

With that in mind, we look at what I feel are the most important variables that we can measure, do our best to estimate the ones we cant, and then use these charts to speed up the calculations.

Nymdok

p.s. Follow DATs example! Playtest! I can use all the feedback I can get! Try this at home kids! :)